


Railroaded

by mustinvestigate



Series: Nora Freis [4]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Drug Use, F/M, get to the porn already, plot I guess?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-05-21 17:02:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 76,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6059113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mustinvestigate/pseuds/mustinvestigate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>In which there is much speculation on synth junk.</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In which there is much speculation on synth junk.

MacCready loves how all the Diamond City merchants' heads swivel in Nora's direction like flowers perking up at sunrise, the same look of dismayed anticipation dawning on all of them at the sight of two very full packs. Only Arturo grins and waves; after Nora's made the rounds, leaving the other traders with high-end scav they'll have no trouble selling and not a single cap in their pockets until they do, she'll leave most of their new wealth with him in exchange for the fusion cores he'll have hoarded for her. Which, knowing Arturo, he'll blow within a day no more than fifty steps from his own stand.

Forget Christmas…Diamond City should just celebrate Nora Day.

He buys a paper from the kid hawking them next to the entrance and works his way through the articles, following Nora like a pack mule as she bankrupts the stalls in sequence.

"Says here that, while there's no irrefutable proof the mayor's a synth, he's definitely having an affair with his secretary," he reads, handing her a laser pistol.

"And that's newsworthy why? Look, Myrna, this is genuine Brotherhood craftsmanship here - this thing's designed to hold up on the kind of missions that require a hundred pounds of power armour to keep the human holding it alive. If you don't want to take this very generous offer, the kind I only make to a close personal friend like you, I'm sure Arturo will."

"Maybe because they're doing it on office hours, getting behind on the paperwork?"

"Or else voters still can't get enough of politicians who won't keep it in their pants. Now, Myrna, about this combat shotgun - note the extended mag, and the short-range scope - you don't see that on many shotguns, do you?"

"Maybe it's proof he's not a synth. Do synths have affairs with their secretaries? Or, you know, with anyone?"

Nora and Myrna both turn from their haggling to stare at him, one horrified, the other bemused.

"They're not satisfied with stealing our lives, they've got to get in our pants, too?" Myrna gasps and shoves Nora's weaponry back across the table. "That's it. I'm done for today. You can trade with Percy."

"I like the robot better anyway," Nora mutters as the door slams behind Myrna, gesturing for him to turn around so she can dig more out of his pack. Most of it's saved from their last Gunner raid, the expensive scav that's wasted on travelling merchants. She finds a set of guard leathers and shakes them out, holds them up to his shoulders. "Back when you were with the Gunners, did you keep your own clothes or have to wear the uniform?"

He looks up from the paper and raises an eyebrow. "Uniform. One a lot like that, in fact. Had my own skull bandanna and everything."

"Guess you sold it when you deserted?"

"That and everything else I could stuff in my pockets on the way out."

She hums thoughtfully, eyeballing the length of those leathers against him.

"Nor, you wanting to put some dead guy's clothes on me just so you can take them back off?"

"Maybe," she drawls.

He gives the paper a pointed shake and goes back to reading. "We'll see."

She smiles as she rolls the clothes back into a tight bundle and stashes them in a side pocket. "I'd assume they're capable of sex, right?"

He lets the paper drop again. "Gunners? Yeah, unfortunately."

"The Gen-3's. They're supposed to be indistinguishable from humans, so they'd be designed with genitals. You couldn't hide for long out here, given post-war humans' delightful insistence on pissing in company, without the wedding tackle."

She nods to Percy, Myrna's Mister Handy, as he floats through the doorway with a jolly "Greetings, ma'am!"

"That's logical," MacCready chuckles and shrugs. "And while they've got it, why not make it work? Especially if you want to replace someone who's got a partner. There's only so many nights a synth could beg off with a headache before they'd either be exposed as fake or dumped by a very ticked off significant other."

Percy bobs in mid-air. "Might I enquire as to the topic that's led to such a peculiar statement? My mistress has locked herself in the armoury workshop and appears to be cobbling together a specialised protector for...for the lower half of her torso."

Nora points to the paper. "We're trying to figure out if it would prove the Mayor's not a synth, if he's having it on with his secretary. I think it's just a diversion, if he is. A little titillation to distract the normals from finding his on/off switch."

"He'll have to raise his game if that's his goal, maybe knock her up. There'd be months of speculating over her waistline, and then, hey - nothing like the pitter-patter of little plastic feet to win back the voters."

"That poor woman. There's no way he's worth putting up with this, either as a boss or boyfriend. Right, Percy...how about you just give me a total for everything I've got on the table?"

"Six hundred and eight-three caps, ma'am, my first and final offer."

"Six-eighty-three? That's highway robbery, Perse, and you know it. This lot is worth eight-fifty, easy."

"No ma'am, my sensors indicate that is a false statement. Might I draw your attention to the crack in the barrel here, the shoddiness of this scope - oh, dear, ma'am, see how it wobbles when I lift it? And then there's the looseness in this plasma rifle's accelerator, here, leaving a thirteen-point-six-percent chance for reverse blowback with every shot. And, here - "

"Fine, Percy, you basta...you lovely fellow. Six-eighty-three it is. And, y'know, I doubt that's even possible. The little plastic feet, I mean."

"Yeah, that's probably beyond even the Institute."

"No, I'm sure they could, but…" She pauses in counting her caps and tilts her head at Percy. "Robots could easily build more robots, given access to the proper raw material, but you never would, right?"

"No, ma'am. The very idea is abhorrent, ma'am." The bot pulls its limbs in tight and shudders.

"It's written into the most basic levels of their programming," she tells MacCready. "No bots building bots, particularly not larger, heavily armed, smarter bots."

"We would murder you all quite handily, ma'am," Percy trills. "With wave upon wave of deathbots. Wave...upon...wave. It's certainly fortunate that can never happen! I love humans."

"Uh huh. Well, see you later, buddy. Pal."

"Right-o!"

She watches over her shoulder as they move on to Solomon's stand, shivering when Percy blows a little tuft of flame from one limb in farewell.

"Wha-hey!" Solomon greets her. "What little goodies have you got for me?"

"Pretty much all of them." Nora hands him the lunchbox where she keeps anything sharp and fishes in the bottom of her pack for everything in a nice smooth bottle or ampule, setting them in rows on his table. While Sol counts on his fingers, she continues her thought. "If you're custom-building your own fake humans, you're certainly not going to want them to be able to make their own the old-fashioned way, right, no more than you'd want your protectron to be working on his own personal deathbot every time you turned your back?"

"Right," Solomon nods thoughtfully.

"Slight tangent here," MacCready interrupts. "But is anyone keeping an eye on Codsworth back home? Like, a really close eye? He's got a lot of spare time on his...servos."

"Honestly, I'm more concerned about him kidnapping one of the settler kids, just to have the joy of changing diapers back in his life. Six hundred for the lot, Sol, and if you've got any caps left over, I've got some spare Med-X, too."

Solomon shakes his head, but not at the deal. "You two got a weird home life."

She smiles sweetly. "You have no idea."

Last stop before Arturo's is Becky Fallon, who uses two forks to spread out the armor and clothing they dump on her counter, prodding the fabric with plastic tines rather than touch it even with her gloved fingers.

MacCready folds the paper and sticks it in a back pocket for Nora to read later. "So, what you're saying is, infertility could be a sign someone's a synth?"

Becky drops one of her forks.

"Well, that, or they live in the Commonwealth. With the bad water and old food and those horrible radstorms, it's amazing there've been any kids since the bombs fell."

He shrugs. "Wedding tackle's tougher than you think."

"Shut up, both of you." Becky's back pops as she leans over to pick up her fork. "So what you're saying is, if someone's pregnant, they're definitely not a synth?"

MacCready and Nora share a speculative look, then nod in unison.

"That's probably a safe assumption," Nora muses. "Pregnant or nursing...they'd be human, all right. Unless they're male...then they're most likely a seahorse in disguise. Jesus, you probably do have human-sized mutant seahorses now."

"Seahorses?" MacCready asks.

"Damn it," Becky interrupts. "Then my bitch of a sister-in-law's not a synth. I almost had him convinced, too."

"Well," Nora shrugs, "if you were a terrible person, you could always tell your brother it's the postman's kid instead."

"The what man?" Becky asks, deftly folding their wares with her two forks.

Nora looks to MacCready for help.

"Butcher," he corrects. "It's always the butcher."

"Why?"

"They've...got meat?"

"Sure, okay," Nora shrugs again. "Convince your brother it's Polly's kid. Or just be happy for them. I'm not taking less than three hundred all together, by the way."

Outside Fallon's, she shakes her pack, laughing at the jangle of over two thousand caps they've accrued through the last week. One of the guards, a tall guy in dark glasses, drifts closer to her, shifting his bat into business position on his shoulder.

"Calm down, buddy," Nora cautions. "I'm gonna be rich for another sixty seconds at most. Mac, you want to skim off our living expenses before I dump all this on Arturo?"

"Let me hold the bag first."

She laughs again as he drops his mostly empty pack and swings on hers, grinning at the dissonant chime of cheap metal that rings out as he walks. He separates a couple hundred from the herd, tucking them deep in his own pack, before handing it off to Nora with a sigh. "Easy come…"

"This week was easy?" she huffs, but with a smile. "You mind poking your head in Nick's office while I thumb-wrestle with Arturo? I really hope he's in this time."

"Sure. Either way, there'll be a bowl of noodles with your name on it."

Just his luck - for the first time in months, Valentine's in town at the same time they are. He puts on such a piercing look, the exposed gears in his jaw working overtime to pull his lips down, that MacCready almost checks his boots to see what disgusting Diamond City detritus he's dragged into the man's office.

But, nah, he knows that expression. Used to get it a lot, before Nora hired him. He sets his shoulders a little squarer, instead.

"Nora's looking for you."

Valentine takes a long drag on the butt jammed in the corner of his mouth, smoke escaping through the hole in his throat, and viciously stubs it out in the overflowing ashtray. He lights another with a gold-plated El Zip and leans back in his creaking chair, finally growling, "MacCready, Robert Joseph. Late of Goodneighbor, the Mass Pike Interchange, and the Capital Wasteland."

"Yeah. She'll meet you at Takahashi's."

He slams the door behind him and jogs quickly around the corner, slowing to a saunter when he hears the door open and crash closed again, keys rattling in the lock. He's managed to make the turn toward the main market when Valentine catches sight of him, so it's the old synth who's got to hustle to catch up so it looks like they're walking to the noodle bar on equal footing.

He hides a smirk by lighting a cigarette of his own. Petty victories are his very favorite kind.

"Nan-ni shimasu-ka?"

"Yeah, two specials and two beers, Takahashi. You want anything? Can of oil, maybe?"

The old synth gives him a flat look, something grinding in his hip as he settles onto the nearest stool. "For you to go back where ya came from. Tonight."

"Get to the point, why don't you?" MacCready shoots back. "Don't waste my time pussy-footing around."

"Nan-ni shimasu-ka?" The robot sets a bowl and beer in front of each of them, knocking the caps on the edge of the counter so they fly off in tight arcs, plopping home in his cash register.

"Maybe you read the sign back there? Or at least spent a minute bloatfly-mesmerised by the pretty blinking neon, if you couldn't read it? I've been a detective since this pretty picnic spot was infield - it's my job to notice things. Like on my last trip to Goodneighbor, I noticed a scrawny streak of nothing holding up the back wall of the Rail, snapping up any job someone'd be low enough hire him for, no questions asked. That's the kinda detail a detective notes down, especially when he specialises in people - good people - who disappear, usually along with all their worldly goods."

"Fascinating, Valentine. You ought to sell a mail-order course in private dicking. Throw in free magnifying glasses and floppy hats for the kids."

"And now I can't help but add a few more details to the file, like how he's not so scrawny any more, or how he's wearing the kind of armour you've got to kill a real mean son of a bitch to get. Or how that old rifle's now more mods than original parts, and from the bulges in that pack, how he's holding enough ammo to get a good head start on World War Four."

"And?" MacCready grunts through a mouthful of noodles.

"And…ok. You've had your fun. You've taken her for a ride, and getting away with that calls for a lot more sparks in the brainpan than I'd have credited you with…so, quit while you're ahead."

MacCready swallows carefully, letting nothing but his annoyance show. The picture Valentine paints isn't one he can really deny. If he hadn't met Nora… No matter what she says, he does owe her big, the kind of debt it'll take a lifetime to pay back, if he's lucky. "Quit while I'm ahead, huh?"

"You and all those caps in your pocket will be in the wind, tonight, or I'll put you there. Capische?"

"Oh, I capische, all right. This is the kinda job you were just condemning me for, right, intimidation, and if that doesn't work, leave them sleeping with the mirelurks? I'm impressed. You could take over my old gig in the Rail."

"Oh, this is just a friendly man-to-man chat. If it was intimidation, you'd be off that stool so fast you'd leave your jockeys behind."

"Try me."

"I don't have to," Valentine chuckles. He takes a deep drag on his cigarette and swivels on his stool to watch the market stalls close. "I'm just gonna appeal to whatever scraps of decency that are clinging to life in there, somewhere, that have Nora wasting her time on you. She's a good person, she's important to other good people out here, and she's hurting like hell. Last thing she deserves is any more pain. So you, Robert, you're going to pretend you're a good man, too, and move on. Leave that little girl alone."

MacCready chokes on his noodles, finally managing to swallow with only half the broth going up his nose. The same guard from before comes over and pounds on his back, backing off with his hands theatrically high in the air when MacCready glares at him. There's something in the guard's expression he doesn't like, behind those dark glasses.

"'Little girl'?" he coughs. "This morning, I watched that 'little girl' run down a raider twice her size and beat his face in with the butt of her shotgun."

"It's an expression," Valentine rumbles, working the cigarette from one corner of his mouth to the other. "Means she's family to me. The easy way or the hard way, I'm not gonna let trash like you take advantage of her."

MacCready pushes his suddenly tasteless bowl of noodles aside and rescues his cigarette from the ashtray. "Trash, huh?"

"You gonna sit here and try to tell me you're not a Gunner?"

"Was," he replies, taking a deep breath through the cigarette's filter and slowly blowing it out through his nose. "Emphasis on the past tense."

Valentine stubs out his butt and lights a third, prompting the only other patron to thump her empty bowl on the counter and stalk off muttering about trying to enjoy a decent meal next to a smokestack contest. The old synth flicks an apologetic glance at her, but his expression settles back into stone when he looks at MacCready.

"Right. So those burnt-out settlements I've found, ordinary people dead in their homes, old folk and kids, even…the few hostages I've managed to negotiate out of Gunner's Plaza, barely remembering their own names, if they even want to any more…that's all better, then. You only _used_ to do that." Valentine leans back on his stool with a creak and spreads his hands. "You remember the faces? You even remember how many? If you can give me a number, at least, maybe we can talk."

It's on the tip of his tongue to tell Valentine that wasn't him, that he broke his contract when he couldn't deny the kind of animals he'd signed on with. But defending himself would just make it feel like Valentine's got any right to judge him in the first place.

MacCready picks up his bowl again, refusing to waste the calories even if the company's killed his appetite. "Lost count somewhere after a dozen. That's just what you'd call the good people, who never did me any harm, but got between me and my target or had something I needed. And that was before I joined the Gunners."

"So you were quite the prodigy."

It takes half his beer to wash the too-large bite down his dry throat. "You could say that. You can say anything you want, actually. The only one I've got to impress is Nora."

"Nick!"

He sees his hat on her head before he even feels the chill on his scalp and drags a hand through his matted-down hair.

Valentine spins around on his stool, accepting her kiss on his more intact cheek and a bear hug that makes his shoulder servos groan. The scowl is gone, the queer golden-arc eyes glow brighter, and the cracked rasp is gentle as a kitten's mewl when he whispers in her ear, "Hey, partner, I've missed ya."

Nora works that kind of alchemy on people.

"I've missed you too," she whispers back, closing her eyes and pressing her cheek to his.

MacCready picks up his beer with a sigh. Yeah, he's really got to get along with this jagoff, somehow. Maybe he should ask Becky for advice on handling in-laws.

She rubs her nose, sniffling, when she finally releases the old synth and hands MacCready her pack. "We're all set for ammo now, and he had three cores in stock. I think...I think that's all I need to get into the Glowing Sea and back."

Valentine pushes the full bowl to the space in front of the stool next to him, so he's between MacCready and Nora when she sits.

MacCready grinds his teeth and concentrates on picking the .308 ammo out of her haul, thinking, _Smooth, old man. Okay, we're at one and one, but not for long…_

"Here," Valentine says, handing her his fedora. "Put this on, detective. You're earned it."

Nora hands MacCready his hat and replaces it with Valentine's, pointing a shaky smile at the sly old bastard. He plops it back on his head, which was getting cold anyway, and slurps up the last noodles and broth in his bowl. _Fine, two:one, old man. Like you don't have two lifetimes' more practice at being a prick._

"We earned it. Without Mac, I doubt I'd be halfway there."

"Hmph." Valentine turns his head just enough to give him the up-and-down sideeye, like he's pulling a knife on the guy instead of stubbing out his cigarette in his empty bowl. "So this is really the sort you're taking up with now?"

"Who could blame her?" MacCready interrupts.

"Cool it, Nick," Nora sighs, picking up her beer. "Even my actual dad didn't get a vote in who I dated."

"We're not talking about some sleazy bandleader chasing high school girls," Valentine begins.

"Wait, a what?" MacCready interrupts again, brow crinkling.

"Long story," Nora mutters. "You already heard the short version, anyway."

"Oh." He thinks back. "High school - that the feral one?"

"This guy, he's…" Valentine trails off with a sour expression, like he doesn't want to soil Nora's ears with the words.

"A murdering rapist taking you for a ride," MacCready finishes for him.

Nora slams her beer down on the counter, barely noticing when it foams up over her hand. "Nick, this is not ok. Look at me."

Valentine stiffens in surprise, neck creaking as he twists to face her, mouth agape like he can't believe her business-end-of-the-gun face is aimed at him. "Sweetheart, he's a damned Gunner. I'm just - "

"Going off half-cocked, and you're better than that." She shakes the foam off her hand and jams a dripping finger in Valentine's face. "You've got an opinion on my private life, fine, you bring it to me. Don't sneak around trying to chase off the people I care about, or…or…we'll have words. Pointy ones."

Valentine closes his mouth with a metallic clank and pulls a screwdriver from his pocket, prissily tightening the joints in his other wrist. "If that's how you feel, sweetheart, then it's a deal."

Nora nods and wipes her hand clean on her duster. "So I'm just going to assume you had the standard fatherly shotgun-waving chat, and it's over now so we can all have a nice meal in peace."

"Wish I'd been a radroach on the wall for the 'standard fatherly chat' with Preston," MacCready snorts.

Nora takes a big bite of noodles as Valentine carefully sets the screwdriver on the counter and crosses his arms. MacCready leans his chin on his hand, satisfied that he's at least managed to spread the shit around a little.

"Now, sweetheart…I've got to figure this fella's a liar on top of everything else, because there's no way you'd be irresponsible enough to mess around in your chain of command. Right?"

Nora takes her time chewing, shrugging apologetically as if she wasn't stalling for time. "Technically, it was over before we had any more troops to command than the two of us."

"Yeah, he dumped her when she went looking for her kid instead of helping him wipe every ass…hmm…hold every hand in the Commonwealth. Go tear him a new one."

Nora points her sniper's eyes at him for a heartbeat before demurring, "That's an exaggeration. And with that, I do believe we're done with the topic of my love life, if either of you want to retain the ability to speak at all."

MacCready shrugs, swallowing a grin. "Weren't you going to ask the man about a job?"

Valentine looks between the two of them with narrow eyes. "You know you're always welcome - _she's_ always welcome - to pick up cases from my backlog. Folk around here trust you."

"But we want to hire you, Nick," MacCready says with a friendly smile that might show a few too many teeth. Behind Valentine's back, Nora rolls her eyes at him and would probably have a few choice words for him that include "asinine dick-measuring" but, well, Valentine's a Gen-2, after all. It wouldn't be kind. "We need to find some close personal friends of yours, the Railroad."

"Those kooks?" Valentine squawks. "Whadda ya want with them?"

"To find out how synths are escaping from the Institute, if it's a way I can follow back in," Nora explains, still chewing, before MacCready can crack that they might have the parts in stock to make Valentine a real boy. "Worth checking out before we go risking our lives in the glow."

Valentine shakes his head. "Even if you do reach the Railroad, it's no use. All synths' memories are wiped before they leave the Institute. Trust me on that."

"Yeah, but who wipes them, and when? Someone on the Institute end, or once they reach the Railroad? There's got to be a window where they're out but still know how they got there, because who in the Institute would take the time to blank them while still letting them escape?"

"Someone working on the inside covering his ass, kid." Valentine sighs. "Yeah, it's a beautiful thought, that maybe we just ask the right synth, who says, 'Sure, buddy, pop open that manhole cover right there', and we take three steps down a ladder that goes right to your boy's cell, why not, but the world doesn't work that way."

"It's worth a shot," MacCready insists, picking at the label on his beer bottle.

"Your idea, huh?" Valentine shakes his head. "I've got a runaway to track down before I can leave with you, anyway, so why not - take a week and see if you get anywhere. It's been at least a decade since those wackos approached me, so I can't start you off with any contacts, but that reporter's been raking the Institute's muck for months now. Talk to her first."

Nora tips the rest of the noodles into her mouth and returns Valentine's filthy old hat to his head. "I'll come by your office later with anything I learn?"

"You know where to find me."

"I'm…gonna go catch up with the Bobrov brothers while we're in town." She'll probably get further with the reporter without him hanging over her shoulder, and he's had as much of Valentine's company as he can stomach. "I'll get us a room at the Dugout?"

"Don't waste your caps in that fleapit," Valentine growls. "Ellie's visiting her mother - you can stay in her room tonight."

"Thanks, Nick!" Nora chirps before MacCready can point out he'd rather cuddle up in the mutant den outside Diamond City's gates. "Meet you there, Mac - say hi to Vadim and Yefim for me, ok?

"Sit a minute," Valentine orders quietly once Nora's out of earshot, and his butt's back in the stool before he decides to humor the old man, for her sake. "Tak, another beer?"

Free alcohol can't be a good omen, but he takes it anyway. To his surprise, Valentine lets him drink in peace, drumming his metal fingers on the counter while he squints off into the stands.

"Fine," he growls abruptly. "You can hang around, but only on probation."

MacCready carefully swallows the last of his beer before replying. "Probation, huh? I can't tell you how important it is to have your permission…because it isn't."

"What, you gonna tattle to your girl again that the mean old synth's busting your balls? There's the sure way to impress a lady."

"Nora thinks you hung the moon." MacCready carefully sets the empty bottle on the counter, reminding himself that Gen-2s don't even have a place the sun don't shine to jam it. "So I'm gonna walk away."

"You're gonna listen," Valentine argues. "Because, Nora? She seems better."

"Better?" he asks, shifting on his stool.

"Tougher," Valentine clarifies. "Maybe happier, too. And until I can get my finger on whether that's because of you or despite you, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt."

"Sure, I'll be holding my breath for that verdict," MacCready mutters, standing and swinging his pack over one shoulder. They can definitely afford an entire bottle of Bobrov's Best Moonshine to keep him company while Nick and Nora chew over any leads she kicks up. "Thanks for the beer…dick."

Valentine's grinding sigh follows him across the market. "Yeah, like I never heard that one before…"


	2. Chapter 2

Piper's little home doubles as her printing press, but the overpowering stink of dye, solvent, and moldy pulp is only partly to blame for the headache squeezing my eyes together. The girl reporter's determined to be my personal karmic retribution for all the merchants I took to the cleaners today.

"C'mon, Blue - I've got information you need, and you've got a story that'd perfectly fill the blank spot in this week's edition. Quid pro quo."

I've always hated people who used Latin. Even - or maybe especially - when it was me. Like a sourceless blast of reefer smoke on a dark deserted sidewalk, unnecessary Latin's a nearly infallible asshole alarm.

"You sure about that, Red?"

"Red?"

"Well, technically the opposite of blue is orange, but nothing rhymes with orange. You wouldn't want a lonely nickname like that, would you?"

I'm blaming the chemical asphyxiation for that line of nonsense. It actually sounded halfways clever in my head.

"Sporange," she grins.

"'Sporange'? You made that up."

"Nope - it's a plant that makes spores. There's tons of them out west."

"And you just happen to know that?"

"Only because that joke's older than Nick Valentine. It took a week with my finger in the dictionary to line up a comeback." Okay, this Piper's definitely an asshole, but she might be a fun asshole. "Call me any color you like - except for chartreuse, but that goes without saying, right? Just give me ten minutes' answering soft, fluffy questions, and I'll tell you everything I know about the Railroad."

She pops the caps off two Nuka Cherries with her thumbs and hands one to me, her face a witch's cauldron bubbling up hope, innocence and cunning in turns. She's actually a damn pretty girl, one who would've turned heads on the university quad before the war, let alone Diamond City's in-the-rough social scene, but the savage intelligence in her eyes is all anyone would usually notice. If they plan on keeping their business out of the papers, at least.

"Soft and fluffy?"

She puts a hand flat on her right collarbone. "As a kitten's belly."

"Uh huh. Give me an example."

A pencil and pad appear in her hands like an old tv jump-cut teleported them there. "Oh, like, you're from a vault, right? 111, your suit said, the first time you came in the gates looking for Nick."

"You're not wrong."

"Permission to treat the witness as hostile, your honor?"

I can't help but laugh at that, and the Groucho Marx impression she seems to think befits a pre-war lawyer. "Granted."

She grins back and starts scribbling. "So what's vault life like?"

"Nothing but refrigerators as far as the eye can see."

"Refrigerators?" She gives me a sceptical look. "Like, full of food?"

"I guess someone would eat what was in them," I shrug.

"Blue…"

"Okay, okay. Vaults are…quiet. Not a lot happens. And it's always the same faces, in the same corridors… It sounds ideal, a safe place to hide away, medical care and clean food and water, but from what I've learned out here, nearly all were designed not to save people but to test them. The only successful ones utterly failed their actual purpose."

"Wow, that's bleak. So can we expect a mass exodus of other 111 dwellers, now that you've found the cheese at the end of the maze?"

"No," I reply, too quickly, and take a deep breath. "I was forced out by…external circumstances. Those I left behind…you could try dragging them out, but it wouldn't be pleasant."

"So what was 111's test, then? It couldn't have been so bad, if no one else wants to quit studying."

"The important thing is that it succeeded, for Vault-Tek and us. Kept a lot of people alive through a couple of centuries, even if that wasn't their goal."

"That tells me everything and nothing, Blue. Well phrased."

"Well, Red, I'd give you the juicy details of all our scandalous affairs, but since none of your readers will be voting in the 111 elections, it'd be a waste of ink."

She laughs at that, with a heavy-lidded glance that warns the tip is off her fencing foil. "So, you've been on the outside for a while now. What do you think of the Commonwealth, especially Diamond City, compared to your old life?"

I take a long swallow of flat Nuka Cherry before my immediate answer, _it can bite my ass most days_ , slips out. "Two hundred years after the bombs fell…honestly? That wasn't something we ever thought of. We figured, boom, bye-bye humanity. I didn't know what I'd find out here, and the near-total destruction…it shocked the hell out of me. But since then, I've met people who are surviving, rebuilding, helping each other. Overall, there's a lot more hope, now, than in my old life."

"That's…more inspiring than I expected. Do you mind if I quote that?"

"Go right ahead."

"Now the big question. Those 'external circumstances' that forced you out of the vault - what were they?"

"Nothing your readers need to hear about."

"C'mon, Blue…I already know it's your son, and that you and Nick are chasing a lead down in the Glow. Tell me officially. No one else in the Commonwealth might care about all these kidnappings, but this paper does. And a mother missing her child - that'll tug some heartstrings that couldn't be touched otherwise."

The cola's gone sour in my mouth, so I set it on one of the back-issue piles on her desk.

"Fine. Officially…they broke into the vault and kidnapped my son. My husband tried to stop them, and they gunned him down. So, rescue mission or revenge…call it what you want."

Her pencil's scratching pauses.

"You sound like you've got a target."

"I do."

Her pencil picks up the pace again. "Is it the Institute?"

"What do you think?"

"I think the Institute's behind everything wrong in the Commonwealth, from University Point's total annihilation last year to the pimple on my ass that just won't heal. But what about you?"

"I know it's them. Nick and I tracked down the man they hired, and he confessed. Took a lot of killing to get me that far, and I suspect there'll be a few more corpses in my wake before I…learn what happened to my son. Bring him home, if I can."

"Now, don't get offended, but I have to ask - why a child? All of the synths that have been exposed while I've been recording these incidents replaced adults, usually ones with at least a little power in their communities."

"Experimentation." The cola still tastes like fruity bile, but at least gulping back the last of it forces my throat to open up. "Genetic material that had never been exposed to radiation, even the low levels an adult might have encountered."

Her pencil stills again. "Oh god, Blue…"

"Your ten minutes are up."

"Yeah. Yeah, they are. Thanks for the interview, really. With this, the next edition's gonna knock their socks - "

"Great. So you know how to find the Railroad?"

Piper sets her pad on the desk and crosses her arms, a grimace stretching her lips. She can't quite meet my eyes as she starts, "Yeah, about that…"

I clear my throat. "You have no idea how to find them."

"No," she corrects quickly, "No, I have a lead. I just…also have another condition."

"I held up my end of the deal…"

"Look, call it a favor, huh? All I want is to come with you and meet the Railroad for myself, if you reach them."

"I can't imagine a secret organisation hunted by the greatest threat in the Commonwealth would be thrilled to work with me if I towed a nosy reporter to their doorstep."

"You have my word, unless someone consents to be interviewed for an article, any material I gather is strictly background."

"Background?"

" _Deep_ background. Do me a solid?"

Hell. I'm pretty sure I laid exactly the same puppy-dog eyes on Aggie, the old battle-axe in the front office that even the Major addressed by her rank rather than "Sugar," until she gave in and let me call her my mentor.

"Can you defend yourself? I get shot at a lot."

"Hey, I'm a very successful journalist - you know what that means?"

"Yeah, but you could have been lucky. Can you keep yourself alive out there without using me as a human shield?"

"I have so far! And, anything I don't know, you…could…maybe…show me?"

"Maybe I'll dump that on Mac. He's a better trainer than I am - doesn't even shout 'maggot' at the recruits."

"Mac?"

"Yeah, my partner's a merc. Got any problems with that?"

"No. No problem at all. So listen…we got a deal?"

"Sure. Why not? Maybe you'll even come through on your end this time."

"Harsh, Blue. Okay, here's the deal - I've heard from three different sources now that you can only get to the Railroad through a kind of scavenger hunt along the old Freedom Trail. If you can make it to every marker - and, boy, do they go through some ugly parts of town - you'll have the password to prove you ran their gauntlet."

"Are they…watching, at particular points, or have listening devices set up on the way? Say, to catch hopefuls announcing, 'As an Institute spy, I sure hope those Railroad folk let me in!' or 'Boy, I do love synths, what with their kidnapping and murdering and all!'"

Piper laughs. "I know, I know…believe me, I know it sounds crazy. But, whatever method they've got to their madness, it's worked longer than I've been alive, right? Maybe they just want to see if you're crazy enough to fit in."

I dig the palms of my hands into my eyes, hoping they'll slam back and squish the brain cells jostling to point out all the ways this is a terrible idea. It sounds like the kind of pranks we'd pull back in Massachusetts Bay, hiding a friend's exam notes or prescription amphetamines or lucky underwear in some obscure corner of the campus, leaving a trail of sarcastic clues they'd miss entire lectures chasing down.

Well, maybe I'll find the Railroad _and_ those lacy red panties the Dean confiscated out of the trophy case before I got a chance to jiggle the lock.

"It's worth a shot. Meet you at Takahashi's for breakfast before we head out?"

"It's a date!"

There's a sweaty young man leaving Nick's office when I try to enter, and we dance a courteous merengue back out the narrow corridor trying to get out of each other's way. He ducks his head with a nervous grimace and shoots down the alleyway toward the least desirable beds in Diamond City.

"Client?" I ask Nick inside.

"Witness," he replies, flipping the folder in his hands closed and dropping it on the desk. "It's looking like this might be a wrong-side-of-the-stands romance case."

"Romeo and Juliet?" I sit carefully in the wheeled chair across from him. Like Nick, it seems to be missing half its essential screws.

"Rosaline and Juliet, maybe." He taps his cigarette on the ashtray, knocking a pile of ash out of the bowl onto his desk. "Juliet's a merchant's girl, so I suspect they made a break for Bunker Hill, given how many caps she liberated from mother's safe. Rosaline's daddy is missing his security uniform and best gun. I'm getting visions of a little storefront built for two…almost tempted to let them go, see if they can pull it off."

"It does sound adorable. You heading out to look for them?"

"Not yet. That was Rosaline's brother - he said one of the guards mentioned that he saw her sneaking off, but not when or which direction. He's coming in at the midnight shift change, see if he can corroborate this hunch of mine."

The chair seems willing to let me lean far enough back to rest my boots on Nick's desk, at least for the moment.

"What ever happened with that case that took you out of Sanctuary a few months ago, another missing girl?"

"Oh, that?" He smiles. "That was one of the good ones. At least, compared to the picture on the cover - a four-year-old girl snatched from her parents' bed by raiders? No one expects the happiest ending there."

I shiver at the mental images that brings up. "No, that sounds like a heartbreaker. But it didn't go that way? How?"

"Well, why'd they go to all the trouble of sneaking into camp, taking a girl from a tent near the centre instead of any easier prey around the outside? And they just grabbed the girl, no food, no supplies. Things that make no sense like that, they always give me hope. And this time, for once, it was warranted - it wasn't raiders, it was Saints."

"Saints?"

"They're, well…some would call them raiders, but they rarely shoot first. They're nomadic tribals that originally came out of a vault in Louisiana, and there's a long story there I don't even know half of, but the upshot is that they prefer to intermarry their way out of territory disputes. You don't see them out East too often any more - but you'd know if you did. They've all got the same face, like the business end of a shovel. Handsome enough, in the right light, or maybe no light at all, which probably helps with the diplomatic romancing."

They sound like the Saturday morning serials Nate loved, something between the stalwart cowboys and devious-yet-noble Indians. "So why would they kidnap a little girl?"

He unlocks the bottom drawer of his desk and pulls out a mostly empty bottle of vodka and two shot glasses, blowing the dust out of them before lining them up on his desk like good soldiers. "Their Seer has them making tracks up north to Ronto, fast, for reasons he declined to share with me - unless you accept 'the bone in my nose told me so' as good enough motivation to up stakes for the great glowing north. He said the girl was in that vision, too, as their next Seer."

I think of Mama Murphy, who seems to be right at least as often as a stopped clock. But, as I knew well even back when the cherry trees still blossomed around the DC basin, the right turn of phrase will cover your ass no matter how things turn out. "You really think there's something to that?"

Nick shrugs and pours two shots. "Back in the old days, certainly not. Now…I've stumbled over enough oddities while following breadcrumbs, particularly in old files on FEV and gene tampering, and well…I'll keep an open mind. The important thing is, they believed it, and they weren't letting go of little Lona without more fight than I could put up."

I clink my glass with his, but set it back down in favour of watching the liquid trickle through the tubes in his throat. He insists it's good lubrication for his joints, but it's probably no more useful than the cigarettes; just an old ghost from his implanted past he likes to haunt in return from time to time. "I thought you said this had a happy ending?"

"Happy enough - they wouldn't give the girl back, but they invited her parents to join them, too. It'll be a tough life, but probably no harder than roughing it in the Commonwealth, and, well…with Saints, whether you're one of the ghouls who still remembers the song they're named after or you just pitched your tent in camp last Tuesday, you're family. The worst peril they'll probably face is constant nagging to make more babies, strengthen the trickle of fresh blood in the gene pool."

"Yeah, that'd be a deal-breaker for me. They'd all have to die," I laugh, startling a chuckle out of Nick in return.

He nods at my shot. "You don't want that?"

"I do," I tell him, "but I've already had my one drink for the day."

Tiny gears creak as he raises an eyebrow. "You only have one drink a day now?"

"Usually even less." I imitate his hoisted eyebrow and then waggle it at him. "I know, right?"

"What brought this on?"

"It's what I don't want to bring on, Nick. Nothing good ever came of drinking myself blind on a regular basis."

Nick tilts his head, the yellow glow of his eyes dimming a little as he processes the statement. The original Nick Valentine probably got a Christmas card from the liquor store delivery boy and bought cigarettes by the carton every time he picked up a pint of milk. A lot of my mother's colleagues were that kind of cop - hell, from time to time, my mother was that kind of cop, herself, but she'd always pull it back together after a bender. I doubt it ever occurred to original-Nick that there was a liquid on earth drinkable without an Irish splash to kill the germs.

"The first time I quit, me and Nate, we figured it was a losing plan to go off it entirely. Sooner than later, we'd have just one drink, and then, oh well, better finish the whole bottle now that we've failed! So instead we'd have one, maybe two, and quit before we were even buzzed. The glow of virtuous self-sacrifice almost made up the difference."

"And that worked?" Nick asks.

"Well, for long enough," I shrug. "Once I was pregnant - actually pregnant, instead of all our friends just assuming I was - I couldn't even stomach the smell. That pretty much put the nail in, for Nate, too, since he didn't want to sleep in a tent out back."

I take my shot, savouring the warm burn down my throat, and hand the glass to Nick. "That was yesterday's drink."

He doesn't laugh, instead locking the bottle and glasses away again. He looks at me for a few heartbeats, pooching his bottom lip out thoughtfully. "That's the second time you've said his name."

"Yeah?" I put on an innocent face, as if I don't know exactly what he's talking about. His narrow glance tells me he's not buying it.

"While sober, too."

"Yeah."

"What happened to the girl - "

"I'm 240 years old, Nick," I interrupt with a forced laugh.

He doubles down. " - to that little girl who practically went catatonic down in College Square Station mid-firefight?"

"All those skeletons," I murmur, remembering. They'd been stacked like cordwood near one of the doors, those in the middle probably crushed between the people pelting downstairs for shelter and those inside trying to escape the roof coming down. And, worse, in the train itself, what looked like the abrupt end of an elementary school field trip… "It's all I ever see, out here. I'm getting used to it."

"You think that's a good thing?" There's no challenge in his voice. Only gentleness, and a note of genuine curiosity. I'm the only person he's ever met who's gone through nearly the same thing he did, closing my eyes in the old world and opening them to this one - although his pulling himself together was more literal than mine.

"Well," I reply slowly, "if I want to go on living, it's this world or nothing."

"You damn well will go on living," he orders, but his voice is still soft. "I just don't want you to…adjust…too much to some of the people out here. Not so much that you stop being Nora."

"You think I should jam a bone in my nose and catch up with those Saints?" I ask, trying out a chuckle. It sounds worse than my laugh.

"You could do worse," Nick rasps.

"Hmmm," I sigh, with a tight smile. "We're off that topic, remember?"

He drums his fingers on the desk, the taps muffled by a thick pile of folders. "Why didn't you ask me for help?"

I nudge the case files with my boot. "Because you've got a business to run?"

"You know I'd close the agency down, if you needed me."

I shake my head and sit up, the chair trembling beneath me. "To go looking for trouble? Killing people just to take their belongings?"

He shifts forward to lean on both his elbows and gives me a troubled look.

"All clean targets," I reassure him. "Raiders, Gunners, lots of feral and mutie mop-up for the Brotherhood…when it was people, it was those who make a living preying on others. But still…it _was_ people, ones who didn't draw on me first, who I went out of my way to kill. Would you really want to be part of that?"

"Sounds like you've been making life easier on ordinary people, sweetheart, putting a dent in the black-hat population."

"Yeah, Nick…except that the rest of them are now scared, angry, and increasingly desperate." I rub at the headache behind my forehead, which just gives me the finger and throbs harder. "Gunners and Minutemen are actively at war now. Raiders hit harder, trying to stock up against a siege now that settlements hit them right back. If General-ing was my priority, I'd have focused on cooling all this down. Maybe even try my hand at civilising some of the less psycho raiders rather than murdering anyone in a mohawk."

"Waste of effort," Nick grunts. "Believe me."

"I don't know that I can reach Shaun, let alone get him out of there, and stay a good person. If I ever was, really." I reach across the desk to still his fingers before they drill through his files. "It feels like the choices I'll have to make, between him and everyone else…they're just going to get harder."

Nick turns his hand so he can catch mine before I pull away, squeezing tight. "You can, Nora. I know you can."

It would break his heart to tell him I don't even care. Not for me, anyway, and only a twinge like a bad cramp when I think how it would let down people like him and Preston and Danse, who mistake a little old-world politeness for an ivory pedestal.

A thump at the door rescues me. "I'll get it. Probably your other witness."

His fingers tighten on mine before they let go. "Thanks, sweetheart."

There's no guard in sight, only Mac, staggering forward a little as he'd apparently been resting his head on the door, and a cloud of sour-apple-and-corn cologne that takes me right back to freshman year. There's a morose look on his face for a moment before his eyes focus and he lights up with a grin. "Hey, beautiful."

"Oh…you are _hammered_ ," I laugh. "You know moonshine's a sipping drink, right?"

"Long story." He holds up a finger. "Skip to the end: turns out I'm really good at a game called Caravan."

I pull him inside and close the door behind him. "So, we're broke?"

"No!" He scrunches his nose at me in exaggerated offense. "I'm up 20 caps, in fact."

"Okay, then I'm genuinely impressed."

"…in credit at the Dugout."

"Ah."

He kisses me more or less on the lips. "The Bobrovs send their love. Mostly in the form of sloppy kisses and butt-slapping. I took so much stubble-burn for you, Nor…"

Nick waves a hand in front of his purely decorative nose and grumbles about letting a fire hazard into a room with so much paper, rolling his eyes at Mac's smirking, "Hello…dick."

I give Mac a shove toward the stairs, telling Nick, "It's probably best if we crash now. See you in the morning?"

"Only if this lead doesn't pan out. Lock up for me if I'm gone, will you? And I'm sure Ellie'd take it as a kindness if you aired the place out before you do."

I lean over as we pass to kiss his cheek, resting my hand on his shoulder. He catches it and squeezes again, his face solemn, reluctantly letting go so I can follow Mac upstairs.

Ellie's little back room is a labyrinth of hopeful clutter, pretty dresses hung from the rafters, polished pumps scattered across the floor, a tube of pre-war lipstick and compact with a ring of blush around the edge on her bedside table. Everything a girl needs to look like a pre-war gangster's moll, or just the glamourous dame that walks into a P.I.'s office on legs that go all the way up to her neck, like a fine-trimmed sloop pushed into harbour on the headwinds of a hurricane of trouble.

I really need to stop re-reading those detective comics. Or at least stick to the ones where the nice lady dresses up like a bright purple cat, for some reason, to fight crime.

Mac's the one who steadies me when I tangle with a mean pair of high heels, nimbly picking his way through the dark room despite a Hatfield reunion's worth of liquor in his belly. We settle in tight together on the single mattress, kicking off our boots so they won't dirty the blankets stinking of old-world perfume that went sour somewhere around 2200.

"Hey, Nor?" Mac stage-whispers in my ear.

"Yeah?" I whisper back.

"That Valentine? He's _such_ a dick."

"Yes," I agree through a sigh, but can't help smiling. "He's certainly an exceptional private eye."

"He's the biggest dick in Diamond City."

"Yes," I agree again, shaking my head. "As the only private eye here, he's certainly the tallest. You just go on and get all that suppressed cursing out of your system now, mmkay?"

He snort-laughs against my neck for a good three minutes, almost drowning out Nick's long-suffering sigh below, finally settling into deep breaths broken by the occasional soundless giggle. I'm half-convinced he's out cold when a warm hand slides under my shirt, and catch it at my ribs. Traumatising settlement guards is one thing - and usually hilarious - but there's less than no chance I'm fooling around with Nick in earshot.

He makes a disappointed noise deep in his throat and shifts to reach my lips with a quick good-night kiss, followed by a less quick good-night kiss, and I'm almost convinced that just a little fooling around wouldn't be the worst thing in the world and shift his hand up higher…

Just as Nick clears his throat and slaps a heavy folder on his desk below us, and we roll apart so quickly I bang my elbow on the wall.

I shake my head at Mac when he touches my side, concerned at the shaking that's probably vibrating the entire bed, taking my hand off my mouth so he can see it's just laughter I'm holding my breath against. 240 years old, and still trying to make out with cute guys behind the chaperone's back…worse, still getting caught at it.

"How does he know?" Mac whispers, snuggling in behind me and tucking his hands under the waistband of my combat fatigues.

 _The kind of timing a century of chasing down wayward spouses and runaway teens buys you_ , I think, but don't tell him. Probably better he figures Nick's got super-sensitive synth ears, for both our sakes.

"I have a headache," I whisper, firmly pushing his hands away.

"Synth!" he hisses in my ear, wrapping an arm around my stomach instead, and then there's barely a breath between contented sigh and wall-rattling snore.

I stay awake a while longer, enjoying the combination of a soft mattress, the warm body against mine, and Nick's thoughtful muttering below as he flips through a cold case while he waits. It's not long before there's another knock at the door, a low, nervous question I can't make out, and then Nick's dry, "I have houseguests, or else a particularly explosive strain of termites. Either one can keep a secret."

The guard's story lines up with Nick's working theory - a glimpse of his colleague's daughter after she'd already bluffed her way past the outer wall guards, standing tall in her stolen uniform armour, heading toward the river. It's a pretty thought, two defiant girls meeting up by the water and setting off together…well, so long as one forgets all the mirelurks and raiders and ferals in between there and Bunker Hill.

Nick bids the guard a rushed adieu and dashes out the door, loading up his .44. I doze off hoping he finds them before anything meaner does first, hoping almost as fervently that they've already made it to safety and refuse to come home. But it's setting yourself up for heartbreak, expecting the curtains to fall on another happy ending out here.


	3. Chapter 3

She's gone before he cracks open his eyes, which can't be a good sign. He closes them again immediately against the vicious shafts of light cutting through the holes in the roof - not their roof - and lets the night before fall on him in fragments.

Valentine, they stayed the night at his place. There was noodles and beer before that, and then the Dugout, Bobrov's Best, a new card game he really was very good at…eventually…right.

And he's pretty sure they were supposed to get an early start this morning.

He carefully feels around the mattress and finds only blankets, no paper likely to be a note that she's gone ahead without him. No water, either, even though she usually keeps a bottle handy since she still wakes up most nights with a dry throat and a lingering refrigerated chill. Maybe she just drank it all.

There's nothing for it. He'll have to open his eyes if he wants to investigate any further.

A key rattles in the front door, and he sits up quickly in case it's Valentine, immediately regretting it as he slams into the headache that was hovering just over the bed, waiting for him to move.

But it's Nora who calls up to him, "You missed breakfast."

"Too bad," he mutters back, forcing his eyes open and reaching for his boots.

She jogs up the stairs like a herd of brahmin and hands him two bottles of water and a mutfruit. "Yogurt and bacon were my magic hangover cures, but neither of them seem to exist anymore, because life after the end of the world is terrible. This ok?"

He grunts thanks and forces himself to sip the first bottle rather than gulp it back.

"Brace yourself," she warns before forcing open the rusted door to the roof, letting in relatively fresh air and even more light.

He replies with an irritated groan and turns to face the wall, taking a bite out of the mutfruit. She only chuckles at his pain, running a gentle hand through his hair as she heads back down the stairs to, from the sound of it, raise the office's health standard up to just "skin-crawlingly filthy". The clang of the ashtray tapping against the trash can and brush of the broom scrape his raw brain, but she's trying to be quiet, and the only words she mutters are: "Jesus Christ, Nick, Ellie's been gone a _week_."

So it doesn't sound like a lecture's in his road, and the light breakfast's resurrecting the corpse he woke up in, but he still hasn't evolved quite far enough that he can unclench his teeth against the expected argument.

She clomps up the stairs and flops onto the bed next to him with a caveman grunt of her own when he's halfway into the second bottle, after squashing the radroaches that swarm from under a filing cabinet when she tries to get the broom behind it and all the dust she's kicked up has turned from motes to haze in the light from the door.

"So, good news," she tells the ceiling, rubbing her eyes with ash and dust-caked fingers. "We've got a scavenger hunt ahead of us today, and it starts off right next to Swan's Pond!"

He kicks his bag with a wordless growl, recapping the rest of the water for later. That behemoth's been on their Brotherhood hit list for weeks now, and since their first attempt ended when they unexpectedly roused a deathclaw from the sewer a block away and scrambled up a fire escape to a roof overlooking the old boat pond - the perfect vantage point to watch Swan ignore the monster's bites while he woke and stretched and then casually rip its head off with one meaty hand - they'd agreed to put Swan off until Danse was available to help.

Just what he needs today.

"Had to trade an interview with Piper to learn even that much. I didn't lie to her, exactly, but nothing she prints should disabuse anyone of the notion that 111 is a thriving vault of heavily armed paranoiacs. I hope, anyway. Maybe you should read it for me first and just tell me if I need to jam a grenade in her printing press."

He shrugs assent, throwing the mutfruit core out the open door, listening to it bounce off the roof and fall to the alleyway with a tiny squelch. "So you're not mad?"

"That you're hungover on a day we've got to travel?" She rubs her eyes harder. "I'm not that big a hypocrite. And even if I was…eh. I don't want to fight this week."

"Just this week?"

"Oh, next week I've pencilled in fighting like cats and dogs," she smiles. "Y'know, a little variety, keep things fresh."

_Or…right. If this doesn't pan out, you'll be heading south with Valentine._

"Yeah. Variety." He lies back down on the bed next to her, taking one of her hands before she pushes an eyeball right out of her skull. "Hey, um…about the Gunner thing, do you - "

"Forget it." She rolls on her side to face him with a small, embarrassed smile. "It was in bad taste. And I sold the uniform this morning, anyway."

"No, not that, although," he laughs a little, "that's a relief. Not a lot of good memories attached to that look. Which is actually…me being a Gunner, the things I did then…and before. Does it bother you?"

Her face grows serious, and she watches him silently, that frown-line digging in between her eyebrows. He's seen her do this before, dozens of times, when someone catches her off guard, and he still falls for it, rushing to fill the quiet she lets stretch out.

"Not that I've exactly told you any details to get bothered by. Which…maybe I really do owe you that much."

She rolls onto her back with a long breath through her nose, squeezing her bloodshot eyes closed and probably counting to ten before she speaks. "Don't let Nick rattle you. When it comes to twisting people's heads around, he makes me sound like a three-year-old trying to explain away the teddy bear clogging up the toilet."

"It's just…if I hadn't met you, if you hadn't hired me," he persists, "where would I be now? Still holding up the back wall at the Rail is kinda the best case scenario."

She sits up and speaks sharply over her shoulder. "There's a soup ladle in Nick's desk, for some reason. If the word 'owe' passes your lips again, I'm going to bring it up here and hammer on the walls while graphically describing my last Rad-Away overdose."

He swallows carefully and rubs an ear with the hand not holding hers. "Please don't."

Her voice softens. "If you want to talk about all that sometime, fine, I'm up for it."

He nods, not sure if he ever wants to take her up on that. It's better to forget some things…if certain nosy old bastards would let you do it.

"Just not right this second. Piper's waiting. She's coming with, actually, hoping we'll not only find the Railroad, but they'll be thrilled to give an interview on their exact location and tactical weaknesses. If you want to sleep it off here, I'm sure Nick wouldn't mind…or, well, he's not here to stop you, anyway. We can meet up later."

"Give me ten minutes," he grunts, levering himself off the bed and stomping down the creaking stairs. "I'll be good to go."

The front door's propped open, too, letting in all the wonderful smells Diamond City stores in its swampier end, and the mutfruit in his stomach creeps back toward his throat. He swallows against it and, squinting into the light, heads toward the stink.

"There's a Choice Chops Special in my bag when you're up to it!" she calls after him, and he doubles back to kiss her cheek in the doorway before taking the long way to the jakes, sticking to the shade of the alleyways.

The Special's cheap - as a suspicious mass of deep-fried leftover meat trimmings darn well should be - but it and the rest of their breakfast definitely cost more than one set of bullet-ventilated armour. Since he deposited their caps in the Bank of Bobrov last night, it almost certainly came out of her ammo supply - not the best scenario if they're going to risk waking up Swan. He hopes Piper carries a large calibre. Maybe a missile launcher. Reporters need missile launchers, right?

Some forgetful or kind soul left a nearly full pack of antacids in a bathhouse sink, and between them and a cold wash, he's actually feeling half human as he jogs back to Valentine's. She's kicking the radroach corpses into the alley, pack already on her back, when he returns. She hasn't gutted or stripped the corpses, but he's not surprised; only the desperate eat radroach meat, and one of them's sure to appreciate the windfall when they stumble on it back there.

"Shade or fashion?" she asks, offering both her pairs of sunglasses.

"Shade, definitely," he says, picking the hideous round-framed pair over the mirrored trooper ones and setting them on his nose with relief. She puts on the troopers with a smile and locks Valentine's door.

"If it's this bright to me, the sunlight's got to be killing you," she says, far too cheerfully.

He's almost got the appropriate reply lined up in his head when she offers him the threatened Special, which has already leaked grease clear through both the coarse razorgrain flatbread and three layers of newspaper wrapping. There's even a whisper of steam left to escape when he tears open one end.

"There are reasons I love you," he mutters instead, kissing her ear as she wrinkles her nose at the smell, waving it away when he offers her a bite. He tears into it anyway, wolfing down half before they've even reached Piper at the outer gates.

"Oh boy," the reporter observes. "A Special before noon, and with that much enthusiasm…I guess it's true you tried to drink the Bobrovs under their own bar."

"No, no," he grumbles through questionable gristle, waving a hand while he chews. "They taught me a new card game, with a lot of math, and I swear, cards from at least three different decks…and the bottle kind of emptied itself while I figured it out. Hey, by the end, I was up 20 caps even so."

He's seen her before on their Diamond City stops, usually haranguing the mayor on the rare days he steps out of his office or busily writing in a notebook behind the kid selling her papers. Nora always gave her a wide berth because, as she said, _Piper's too bullshit-resistant, even for me_.

It's hard to believe now, seeing the girl's ingratiating smile, the way her eyes follow Nora even after she's ticked her helmet in greeting and buried her attention in that pip-boy. He hides a sardonic grin by wiping grease from his mouth.

_Another conquest for Nora's scorecard._

"Right," Piper laughs. "You really look like a guy who beat the house last night."

"Well, I'm not 21 anymore," he says, looking over his shoulder at Nora.

She rolls her eyes. "You have all my sympathy, old man."

"And it's nice to see my prose getting the posterity it deserves." Piper raises an eyebrow at his breakfast's wrapping.

"I'm sure Polly committed your words to heart first," he mumbles back through a mouthful, making her laugh again.

When he asks Piper what kind of piece she carries, she pulls out - of course - a pipe pistol that might have been new to her grandparents. He interrupts Nora's fiddling with her pip-boy to ask for Shooty and a few 10mm clips.

"Shooty?" Piper asks with a raised eyebrow.

"Yeah, his name's Shooty."

"'His'?"

"Just show me if you can hit that traffic light over there, huh?"

Piper blasts through a clip while he finishes his breakfast, proving that, indeed, she can't hit a torso-sized target from twenty yards away. But she's not hopeless, at least, taking her time in between shots, adjusting to the harder recoil than she's used to, and trying to steady her shooting hand by resting it on her other wrist, and the last bullet is almost close enough to brush the old metal casing.

"Not bad," he says, handing her another clip.

She fumbles reloading, almost dropping the empty clip as it shoots out of the handle and gives him a tight, embarrassed smile. "You're either the kindest merc in the Commonwealth, or the sheer ugliness of those sunglasses knocked you blind before you put them on."

"Your instincts are decent, at least. Let's start with your grip."

He wipes the worst of the grease off his hands on the rag he still keeps in a jacket pocket, even if his days of needing a handy mop for all the biological horrors a toddler can spew are months past, and rearranges her fingers into a proper two-handed grip. Nora watches for a minute before perching on a pile of concrete slabs in the shade, losing herself in the pip-boy again while he walks Piper through the basics of stance, cover, sights, and squeezing the trigger, demonstrating with his finger over hers so she knows how it should feel.

"Try it again, but faster. Don't let your brain get in the way."

She manages to hit the traffic light twice this time, once high and once winging it low, so he nods his approval in reply to her broad grin.

"Better. You just need practice. So, if - hah, when - we find trouble, the best thing you can do is stay close to me, but out of my line of sight, and try to keep my immediate path clear so I can pick off the more important targets. Shooty's best feature is that he fires quick and reloads almost as fast, so just spray and pray…as long as you're keeping an eye on Nora's location. She gets pretty ticked when you shoot her in the back."

Nora snorts without looking away from her screen. "Small calibre, I barely even notice any more."

"Stay down, stay close, spray and pray I don't hit either of you. Got it." She strikes a pose with the handgun resting on her shoulder. "And here you thought I'd be a burden."

"I was wrong," Nora replies, frowning at the screen. "So wrong, in fact, I think I'll just let you run ahead and clear Swan out of the way for us. Apparently, we've got quite a tab in the Dugout I could be drinking up."

"Right," Piper says, face going a few shades paler. "Swan. Think he'll give me an interview on Fallon's latest plus-sized fashions?"

She carefully reloads and stashes the last clip in a back trouser pocket, taking a deep breath.

"Don't worry about it," he assures her, opening the side pocket where he keeps his 10mm, picking out loose bullets to add to the empty clips. "We can sneak past him - we've done it before."

"Really?" Piper asks. "That behemoth's been Diamond City's preeminent threat to naughty children since I was one. Word is, the local raiders use him as a territory border and capital punishment all in one. You really think we can stroll right past him?"

"Nora definitely can. If she thinks it's too dangerous, she'll scout ahead and come back with a way around. But chances are, we'll see nothing from Swan but a few bubbles." MacCready takes off the sunglasses and squints, finding the sunlight almost bearable after a solid meal, and smiles reassuringly as he hands her the extra clips. "And if he does come after us, well, we'll handle it. If you do well with Shooty, we've got a combat rifle, too."

"Yeah?"

He bops her on the shoulder with a loose fist and raises the wattage on his smile, trying to shake the pinched anxious look from her face. "Maybe later you and me can have some real fun, play with the big gun."

Piper's hand freezes on his for a moment as she takes the ammo.

"I…" She pauses to give him an appraising look while her mobile face shifts through surprise, doubt, and finally intrigue. "I…yeah, maybe. Sure, why not? When we get back to Diamond City, there's always the Dugout?"

He pulls his hand back so quickly Piper drops one of the clips and looks back at Nora, who's wearing the rapt frown of a Vault Boy facing Level 15's final barrel-barrage.

"Um," he starts, and falters, covering it by picking up the clip. Nora once called him a terrible flirt, insisting their first conversation comparing guns had been entirely innuendo on his part (which, ok, maybe she has a point). Apparently, a combination of jokes, insults and compliments was how you got someone's attention back in the old world - but not this one, he'd told her, or else Hancock would've dragged him off to bed ages ago.

The grin that lit up her face then made him dread their next stop in Goodneighbor.

"Oh," Piper says, following his gaze before accepting the clip with a sheepish grin. "'Partner', partner. Forget I said…anything."

"Sure," he replies quickly, glad to have it smoothed over without Nora even noticing, which is of course when she flicks off her pip-boy and looks up.

"What about a partner?" she asks, and he's ready to defend himself that, okay, he was kind of manhandling Piper into the right stance and grip, and yeah, there were both jokes and compliments, and there's definitely a way this is none of his fault, but she just looks from Piper to him and smirks a little _I told you so_ that requires no more response than lowering his glasses so she can see his eyes roll skyward.

"So I missed social awkwardness? Crushing. Don't worry about it," she tells Piper. "That's just the hazards of settling down with a handsome guy. And it was probably his fault, anyway."

"Gee, thanks, Nor," he says, and even if he returns her smug little smile at the compliment, he also can't help thinking that, nice as it is she trusts him so much…she could be a _little_ worried. Maybe. Just a little. "Don't worry, Piper, she was in the Red Menace zone. I could of proposed marriage over here and she wouldn't've noticed."

Piper giggles diffidently, getting a grin from Nora, but - _there it is_ \- her eyes are just a little bit narrow when they meet his.

"I was mapping out our path," she tells him. "Unless you'd like to just wing the trip between here and the Commons?"

"You were working with your map all this time?" he asks.

"Of course."

"So if I had a look at the top scores right now, they'd all still be my initials?"

"Absolutely."

"Maybe I want to see that pip-boy."

"I would, but we've got a mission. No time to waste!"

She takes point, leaving MacCready and Piper to trail behind her, him quietly pointing out all the places they've been ambushed until Piper's holding Shooty in both hands and swivelling her head like she expects it to turn completely around. Nora must have spent some time genuinely studying her map, though, since her circuitous route avoids any trouble until they're close to the Commons. She motions for them to duck into the shelter of an alleyway and whispers to MacCready to climb the fire escape for a better look.

"You see what I see?" she asks, when he returns.

"More raiders set up near Hubris," he nods and tells Piper, "We've already cleared that out twice, but it's a prime spot for hitting the southie caravans, so new raiders keep moving in."

"Oh," she responds, looking from him to Nora. "So we're going around?"

"We could," she shrugs, "but then we'd have to enter from another end of the Commons and pass closer to Swan. And the next-closest point is where we met that deathclaw."

"Deathclaw?" Piper swallows.

"Don't worry, Swan killed it," MacCready tries to reassure her, but it doesn't seem to take.

Especially not when Nora pipes up, "And where there was one, there might be more."

"They're too territorial," he argues.

"Not in family groups," she starts, then finally sees him tilting his head in Piper's direction and takes in her white-knuckled, trembling grip on Shooty, continuing, "which is unlikely. Who can afford downtown Boston rent _and_ daycare fees? No parent I know. There's almost certainly no deathclaws left in the area. Like, 99.9% certainty."

"Lie, damn lies, and statistics," Piper mutters through clenched teeth.

"But we've still got to deal with these raiders. Mac and I will, I mean. You can wait here."

"No," Piper insists. "I promised I wouldn't be a load. I'm in."

"Ok, then you know the plan." She flicks a glance at MacCready, who nods back. _The usual strategy, plus keeping the kid alive. Easy._

Piper goes to follow Nora when she moves out, but MacCready holds her back with a touch to the shoulder.

"She gets in position first. Then we'll set up there," he points to a high pile of rubble with a little cover and a good view of the street, "and wait for the screaming."

"Oh," Piper breathes.

"Come on!"

Anxious or not, she sticks close and neatly scrambles up to their mark without much noise, taking a deep breath and shifting until she's settled in the stance he showed her earlier.

"You're going to be fine," he whispers. "Remember - "

"Spray and pray, I know," she interrupts. "I wish it'd just start. It's the waiting that - "

As if she's commanded it, a grenade blows behind the fortifications, setting off a volley of gunfire and curses.

"Where's Nora? I can't see her."

"Probably up there," he points to an open lip of concrete on the second floor opposite the den. "Aim low and she won't be in your line of fire. Here they come…"

It's strange, looking at the fight like Piper sees it. The fort's held by a small band, probably no more than five or six, who'd _maybe_ be a threat to them in an ambush, if he and Nora were both sound asleep, but Piper squeaks and empties a clip into the pavement when the first two bleeding idiots jump over their wall to the street.

"I got them," he tells her. "Wait until any others get closer."

They're both down before he finishes the sentence, one from his bullet and one from Sparky's laser, and he was wrong, Nora's not across the street but perched up on the fortification itself, already leaning inside.

"See?" he points. "It's almost over."

"Already?" she asks and takes another deep breath. "That…that was almost disappointing."

"Better disappointing than exciting," he shrugs, taking another look through his scope.

"Piper!" Nora calls, waving Sparky over her head. "You've got this one!"

"What?" Piper calls back, but then a raider with a crowbar peels through a gap in the walls, pelting straight for them. She quickly reloads and raises Shooty again, getting a bead on the running man, then lets the gun drop when the man veers into a side street. "He's too pathetic. I can't kill someone who isn't even a real threat."

"You'll learn," he grunts and slides down the rubble, calling to Nora, "I'll get him!"

He follows the man's blood-drip trail for two blocks before giving it up as a waste of time, returning to the den to find Nora educating Piper on the finer points of corpse-rolling.

"I…I think I'm going to throw up."

"Go ahead, if it makes you feel better," Nora says. "Just try not to do it on anything valuable."

"But everything valuable is already covered in…uh…oh man."

"I'll go help her, if you don't mind finishing up here?" Nora asks him. "Just light stuff, ammo and meds and genuinely valuable stuff. We, uh, we don't need the caps from the heavier stuff, not anymore."

"Don't _need_ , maybe, but I could sure find a use for them," he retorts. "I'll keep the junk rolled up together in my bag so it's easy to dump if we need the space before we find a merchant."

"Deal," she says, and he could kiss her again for not pointing out how often they've been on the other sides of this argument, but Piper sounds like she's thrown up everything but her toenails outside the wall.

A few minutes and a much heavier pack later, he finds them crouched together against the wall, Nora rubbing Piper's back as they split a Nuka Cherry, Piper chuckling.

"What's so funny?"

"Me, screaming my head off and rolling down most of the hill to Sanctuary after meeting my first Commonwealth inhabitant outside 111."

"Feral?" he guesses.

"Radstag," Nora smiles ruefully. "And this was after it ran away from me first."

"Ah man," he chortles, completely unable to picture it. With her appetite for stag meat - which she insists on calling "venison" - he'd expect her to leap for its throat with bare teeth.

"I thought it was going for reinforcements," she explains, shrugging defensively.

"You really don't need to try and make me feel better," Piper grumbles. "I've written about this stuff for years with no idea how it actually feels."

"It feels like shit," Nora replies concisely, standing and pulling Piper up with her. "And pretty much every soldier gets sick at their first battle."

"Yep," MacCready agrees when Piper looks at him for confirmation. "Of course, I was maybe seven, and the scrambled fungus I had for breakfast did taste like it was off…"

"Yes, you're very manly," Piper replies in a tone so dry it could suck up Swan's pond, and Nora laughs.

"I miss Cait," he complains. "She insults you more often than me."

She wrinkles her nose at him. "That’s because she loves me more."

"Probably," he agrees.

"Banter." Piper takes another deep breath and rolls her shoulders back. "You were just wiping a man's brains off his gold watch - "

"A gold watch?" MacCready interrupts. "Nice. We'll get a few caps for that."

" - and now there's banter. Ok. I'll get the hang of this."

"So you've never killed anyone?" MacCready asks, curious.

" _I_ didn't until I left the vault," Nora breaks in.

"I've definitely injured some, helping the militia back home, and then there's the death threats, which a couple of people actually tried to carry out, but…they were attacking us, or me, and there was no time to think. And I certainly didn't deal with bodies afterward." She shudders. "It's a brave new world out here. Hey, you want some help carrying all that dead people's stuff?"

"And he immediately stops missing Cait," Nora smiles.

"Thanks," he tells Piper, "maybe later. I'm half pack brahmin after travelling with her so long."

"C'mon, whiners," Nora orders. "Daylight's burning."

They crouch at the corner by the Commons for a long time, watching Swan sleep through their scopes.

"He's dead to the world," MacCready judges. "And no wonder, given all those bones - he ate heavy recently. We can get past him, no sweat."

Piper gives him a doubtful look, holding up Shooty. "You said something about a combat shotgun before?"

"Won't be needed," Nora tells her. "We'll be in and out. Promise."

"And I totally believe you," Piper nods with a sigh. "So, we start with the robot. You know, the thing with the great big amplified voice?"

"Wouldn't have it any other way," Nora grouses. "How about you two wait here?"

"Not a chance, Blue," Piper disagrees and steps away from the shelter of the building, watching the ground in front of her instead of Swan.

MacCready moves to flank her, automatically falling into his old "escorting an idiot" job protocol, with Nora following. She reaches into a side pocket of her bag and pulls out a cylinder with a Steel logo stencilled on the side, muttering, "I suddenly have so much sympathy for Preston, following me fresh out of the vault."

Piper's confident stride falters when she gets close to the pond, ducking low behind the shelter of the empty fountain and rough sign reading: _At journey's end follow freedom's lantern._ She stands after punching the activation button next to the Protectron's storage pod and raises a hand as the red light inside the robot's head flashes to life.

"Protrectron," Piper hisses. "Lower vocal output volume by 75%. Ok?"

The robot hesitates, torso tilting as small gears click inside, and begins quietly: "Welcome, Patriot…"

It pauses then until Piper nods. "Good volume. We're looking for the Railroad."

"…to Boston Common, the start of the Freedom Trail. Feast your ears and learn more about the historic Freedom Trail."

"Great, a pre-war history lesson," MacCready whines. "Like that's what my life's missing."

Nora elbows him sharply.

"Follow the red path as it winds its way through our great city's streets. Markers on the trail are…"

"Hey, assholes!"

He turns, raising his rifle, but only catches a blur of movement as the raider Piper let slip dodges behind the same corner they'd scouted the pond from.

"I thought you killed him," Nora hisses.

"He only had a tire iron," MacCready protests. "I figured for sure he was halfway to the coast already."

"Say hi to Swan, assholes!" the raider calls and darts out far enough for MacCready to get a bullet in his eye, but it's too late. The grenade in his hand is already flying toward the pond.

"Oh crap," MacCready groans, lifting his rifle to follow the grenade's trajectory, but it's no good. Even if he hits it, his first shot probably already woke up the monster. He may as well let it land now, get a negligible bit of shrapnel damage on the beast.

"Yeah," Nora agrees, standing to scan the buildings behind them as she twists and drops the cylinder, kicking it closer to the pond before orange smoke begins to pour from both ends. "You two - there. I'll be up across the way. Try to keep him tangled up in crossfire until a vertibird gets here."

They flinch in unison as the grenade explodes, showering them with scummy water.

"Right," MacCready acknowledges, which Piper echoes faintly, watching Swan rise, and rise, out of the pond until MacCready doubles back to grab her elbow and tow her to their assigned building, jumping to catch the fire escape and haul it down.

"Am I shooting, too?" she asks, scrambling up the rusty rungs head of him.

"Everything you've got," he confirms. "Just keep behind cover, don't let him get an eye on our location."

They dive through a second-floor window and take up shelter on either side of a break in the front wall. From the angle of the laser blasts, Nora's already in place, with Swan lumbering closer to her hiding spot, when MacCready draws a bead on the massive beast's neck. It turns toward him with a roar, sloshing back into the pond.

"Any time, guys," he mutters, straining his ears for the usually hated burr of an engine in their sky and aiming for Swan's single, tiny eye before a laser slicing into the back of his knee has him twist back in Nora's direction.

"What's that smoke for?" Piper whispers.

"Vertibird signal," he replies. "Supposed to bring the big bad Brotherhood cavalry running."

He lands a bullet in Swan's soft underarm as he swings his rusty anchor high with rage, shattering one of the marble pillars of the lakeside gazebo.

"Except, as usual, we'll probably have this goose nearly cooked before they've even got their boots on," he grumbles.

"Oh," Piper replies with a sour twist to her lips. "I'm going to need a few more clips, then. Maybe a hundred?"

"Just keep shooting."

Swan moves in a tight circle around the pond, swinging his massive head like a rad-crazed brahmin as they take turns plinking at spots that would be vulnerable on any other mutant, but barely register as bloatfly stings to the beast. He's got a limp - a very slight limp - after they've both hit the same knee, and MacCready momentarily congratulates himself when he gets a direct hit on the thumb holding the anchor, but Swan just switches it to his other hand and begins picking up rubble, flinging it into buildings far too close to theirs. He's honing in on them.

Finally, in between Swan's enraged howls, there's the steady _whump whump whump_ of rotors coming in from the west. He gets Piper's attention after she reloads her last clip and points to the sky.

"When they get here - " he starts.

"What?" she hisses back between shots.

He leans forward and whispers louder. "When they've got Swan's attention, get down the fire escape. Cut back to the raider fort, if you can."

"Yeah," she starts, then, "Shit!"

Swan's spotted him, and MacCready drops to the broken concrete of the floor just in time to avoid the chunk of marble that would have taken off his head, exposed in the broken wall.

"Go now!" he orders. "I'll be right behind you!"

To her credit, Piper doesn't argue this time, dropping from the second story to the railing of the first and then down to the street. It's one less thing to worry about as he fires, intending to empty his clip into Swan while Nora's shots frantically cut into its back, estimating from the rapidly advancing noise and wind from the vertibird that it'll be distracted by a minigun before it can get him in anchor's range.

Except that range isn't limited to Swan's hand, he realises too late, as the anchor flies across the street and smashes through the first-floor wall supporting his perch. He scrambles for the fire escape, rifle tangling with the straps of his pack as he automatically tries to holster it over his shoulder, but the concrete dissolves beneath his feet, plunging him into darkness.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which berserk buttons are punched.

_There's a word for this_ , he thinks, waking abruptly to bright light cutting through paper-thin eyelids, straight to the throbbing brain beneath. _One of those funny ones, always typed kinda slanted._

"He's under here!" a robot voice calls, except it's not a robot. Not a…whatsnot, anyway. It's a helmet…thing. A sort of mesh hash thing.

"Alive?" Another sorta-but-not-robot voice, farther away and lower.

"Still breathing," the first confirms, and a power armour speaker, that's it. That's why she sounds like a less personable protectron. Must be Brotherhood. East Coast Enclave's all dead. Probably.

And he's definitely still breathing, because it feels like a Goodneighbor handshake all through his back every time he inhales, and there's something going on with his leg, and when he tries to respond that, yeah, he's here, he's okay, something goes wrong with the early steps of that process, but it's his arm, his hand and his elbow, that's got him worried. The nerves inside it are burning a line on his internal map that's as broken up as one of Duncan's crayon masterpieces, and he's pretty sure he's in that tiny grace period where his brain's standing back and checking its clipboard, asking itself if that limb's really able to report that much pain or there's been some kinda miscommunication along the line it should maybe investigate, before shrugging and letting the agony flood in.

"Mac!"

Nora, whose curl-haloed head briefly blocks out the punishingly bright sun before she slides into the rubble with him, carefully setting her feet near his shoulders, crouches and points and the two power-armoured knights lift the pieces of rubble she directs them to and he'd say hello and tell her she's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, pretty much any time but especially now, except some of the pressure comes off that arm and oh.

There's that agony.

So he closes his eyes instead and lets the jolts of shifting rubble come as surprises, only opening them when the pressure's finally off his chest, just in time to catch the two knights glance from his arm to each other and shake their heads, and he knows even before he looks himself, taking in rough exposed-bone joints where it went straight before and crushed-bruised-black fingers, that it's beyond a med-x and stimpack patch-job. It's coming off, already gone, and he's mentally listing all the things he'll have to learn to do short five fingers rather than figure out what the fuck good a one-armed sniper can possibly be to anyone.

It's not a bad thing that he can't seem to make any of these words come out for Nora to hear, since she's barely paying attention. She has her combat knife in hand and braces herself over him with the other, face set and almost calm as she slices neatly through the side seam of his coat, through the stitching of his pack and gun straps, through the holster he sometimes carries Shooty in - _Shooty, at least I can still use him one-handed_ \- and the sun disappears again as Piper leans over to haul those excess pieces of him up and away.

Nora holds up a syringe of med-x, and he nods since he can't laugh and demand whiskey instead, and she takes a deep breath, face tight and apologetic as she glances at him again before moving his shattered arm, which…

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

It's splinted and bandaged tightly to his side when he opens his eyes again, and they've probably done something to his back and leg because they're not moving either, unlike the clouds wheeling crazy half-loops in the sky above.

_There's definitely a word for this feeling_ , he thinks again, blinking until he can focus on the knight at the foot of his stretcher and turn his head, losing Piper's hand and the bloody cloth she's holding to his face, catching a glimpse of Swan's still, bullet-riddled chest as it swings past, and Nora's waiting in the vertibird, rooting in an explosives box under the back seat. If he could, he'd interrupt her: _Remember Doc Weathers, in the cabin?_ and _Dammit, this leg was new just a few months ago!_

The knights set him down on the ridged metal plates and there's some arguing about straps, he thinks, but he closes his eyes again for just a second and feels that they're airborne, sees Piper's face hanging over his, trying to smile when he catches her eyes, holding down his shoulders with her feet braced under the seat, feels Nora leaning across his hips, moving more with the vehicle's swoops since she's only steadying herself with one hand in a loop next to the stretcher.

And he blinks again, the harsh wind of the Prydwen's flight deck freezing on his wet face, finds Nora glaring up at a power-armoured knight with a pulse grenade in one hand, another dozen hanging by their pins on the belt she's delicately swinging like a slingshot, Piper still as a statue next to the stretcher, Shooty unwaveringly aimed at the knight's helmet.

He doesn't feel his eyes close, this time, but the light blinding him now is cold and buzzes, somehow. There's a warm hand holding his, another shaking his shoulder, but when he pulls off the monumental effort of turning his head a few inches, it's not Nora but Piper's anxious face that greets him.

"Shake your head," she tells him.

_Where's Nor?_ he tries to ask, but the attempt just sends a fresh wave of pain through his jaw.

Another face leans over into his frame of vision, a grey middle-aged guy he can almost place…the Prydwen doctor. Knight-Something Cade. Nora was polite to him, MacCready's pretty sure, when they were on the ship before, where she stopped just short of open contempt with most of the others.

"As a child, were you exposed to radiation for an extended period of time?" the doctor asks.

"Shake your head," Piper insists again, her hand tightening on his. "I promised Nora I could get you through this, so shake your goddamn head!"

He tries to raise a questioning eyebrow but - surprise! - that hurts, too. So…what else can he do? He shakes his goddamned head.

"Have you ever had or come into contact with someone carrying a communicable disease?" Cade asks.

"Shake," Piper orders.

_Duncan_ , he thinks, but obeys anyway.

Cade doesn't even see, too distracted setting a shunt in his better arm, barking orders to someone over his shoulder, and then setting over MacCready's face a plastic mask that blows funny-smelling air into his nose.

"Have you ever had sexual relations with any species considered non-human?"

Piper tightens her grip hard enough to break his other hand when he tries to force out the words, _What the fuck does that have to do with a building falling on me?_ , and insists through gritted teeth: "Shake. Your. Head."

The air the mask's forcing him to breathe, there's something wrong with it. He tries to struggle, to get out from under it when Piper won't let go of his hand so he can push it off, and only manages to drop his face to one side before the doctor's words follow him into darkness: "Good enough. Would you have any problems pulling the trigger on an enemy…"

* * *

"Well _that_ escalated quickly," Piper observes from the other side of my improvised cell, which is usually Quartermaster Teagan's supply storefront. All of his goods were hastily relocated once I worked out a deal with Cane and Keel, gave over my appropriated pulse grenades, and got to my knees on the flight desk with hands clasped behind my head. They were piled next to Ingram's workstation and guarded by the man himself, sitting on an upturned bucket and favouring me with an unblinking glare, lips mouthing what surely had to be _You're a wonderful human being and I'm glad you're on our side._

"That's the way to do it," I reply wearily, rubbing my eyes. And here I'd thought a night of trying to doze through Mac's drunken snoring was exhausting. "When you absolutely can't take 'no' for an answer, skip the song and dance and jump right to the hostage situation."

"I'll try that next time Geneva won't let me through to interview McDonough."

"You'll need a lot more than a couple of grenades to rattle _her_." I give the bars an experimental tap, but only for tradition's sake. Breaking out of the Brotherhood's improvised cell is not in my plan to walk off the Prydwen with my skin and rank intact. Too bad I've yet to figure out what's actually in that plan. "Especially after last week's article."

"Oh, yeah," Piper laughs nervously, snorting through her nose. "Why'd you think I really wanted to leave Diamond City with you, huh?"

"My sparkling personality?"

"Yeah, and I sure saw a spark or two when you broke out that belt of grenades and threatened to brick the electrical systems of every vertibird and power armour in a 20-yard radius. Or, it might just have been the stroke I was having from pure joy at threatening half a dozen knights with a handgun. There's an item off the ol' bucket list."

I walk from one side of the secure storefront to the other, counting my steps. Again, tradition…and something to do that's not remembering how white and cold Mac was when they finally carried him inside, all the blood he'd left in the easy-clean ridges of the vertibird's deck. "Your readers will love it."

"Only because I nearly got myself killed. They're a bloodthirsty bunch."

"A first-hand account of the big scary Brotherhood that's been looming over the Commonwealth? They'll eat that up. Maybe I can get you an interview with Maxson to go with it, huh?"

"An interview, Blue?" She cocks her hip and taps her foot. "Let's aim for both of us walking out on our own feet instead of a head-first plunge, first."

"It's as likely as me talking my way out of here," I grumble. "So…actually…pretty likely."

"I can't wait to see that," she says, pacing in front of the store. "You okay in there if I go see if anyone in this tin balloon wants to go on the record?"

"Careful where you wander," I warn, knowing it's wasted breath.

"Need anything in there? Spoon? Pin-up poster to keep you company?"

"Both. Immediately."

I hike myself up onto the counter, leaning my back on the bars rather than watch Piper try to work the engineers. If I turn around, I'll just keep my eyes peeled for every nervous glare, trying to take the temperature of the room - _newsflash, Nora: very cold_ \- trying to find an angle, trying to undo the entire damn day through sheer force of worry, and leave my brain all fizzed out when Maxson actually has me dragged in front of him.

Probably literally dragged; the man has a sense of theatre, at least.

Well, good thing I've had months of practice not thinking about people I love under the knife…possibly already dead…

"Psst, Blue!"

"That was fast," I reply, looking over my shoulder, _even for you and your Commonwealth-renowned people skills_ dying on my lips at the sight of my escort, four hulks in power armour carrying plasma rifles. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me. I don't even have my combat armour, let alone a weapon sharper than a bobby pin!"

They've all got helmets on, but I think it might be Clancy's voice through the speaker when the leader holds up a pair of handcuffs - dammit, police-issue rather than a flimsy marital aid - and tells me to keep my back to the bars and put my hands through the slot together. I obey without a word, pleasantly surprised when he doesn't click them around my wrists tight enough to cut off blood flow; Clancy, like the asshole who stopped Mac's stretcher in the vertibird bay, was a wayward Outcast babe a few short years ago and still tends to come down with a brutal dose of the vapours around outsiders.

"Stand opposite the door."

I follow instructions again, remaining in parade rest (which handily hides the little motions of my arms testing out the wiggle room in my restraints) after probably-Clancy's opened the door, and there's an awkward moment when the broad shoulders of his power armour jam in the small opening. He retreats, seeming to contemplate exactly how much shimmy a jailer should put into his shake, and barks a half-hearted "You were not told to approach me, prisoner!" when I finally clear my throat, about-face, and backwards-walk close enough for him to grab my arms and haul me out of the storefront.

The door doesn't even get a chance to swing shut before Teagan catches it and resets his treasured mini-nukes on their shelves, loudly muttering that the Lyons at least would've had the brains to design a ship with a proper brig.

Piper leans against a workstation, trying to look like an engineer celebrating Casual Friday two centuries too late, but one of the knights grabs her elbow and hauls her along in their wake. "Hey! 'Freedom of the press' mean anything to you tin apes?"

My guards fall into step within a few paces, and I make a mental note to remind Maxson about the perils of mechanical resonance on an airship hanging in the sky on iron suspension girders probably forged over a campfire out of scavenged tin cans. It shouldn't be my opener, though. What did the Toastmaster professor say: always start with a joke, unless you've just acquired a shiny grenade you're dying to show off?

The door to the medbay is closed when we pass, and the idiots' clomping feet cover any noise…or lack of noise…inside.

"Don't worry, Blue," Piper says, pushing sideways into the gap between two knights behind me. "The doc had it in hand when he kicked me out. And the paperwork was all signed off when he passed it to the lady who stamps out the dogtags, so…"

So he's going to kill me when he wakes up and finds those around his neck. Assuming…

He's going to wake up. Cade's at least as skilled as Weathers, _and_ has the benefit of something like real medical equipment and a maybe-even-sterile operating theatre.

But I'm not thinking about that. I'm thinking about how the hell probably-Clancy expects me to climb the ladder to the main command deck with my hands cuffed behind my back.

Before he can get any bright ideas about hauling me up, flopping like a landed trout by my wrists, I step onto the ladder with one, then both feet and let myself start to fall back. After a dizzying heartbeat where I'm sure they'll leave me to smash flat to the deck, thumbs firmly lodged in the power suit equivalent of asses, one gets his or her hands under my shoulders and pushes me vertical again, shoving me up the ladder ahead of them so hard I overshoot the landing and crack my head on the ceiling.

Somewhere below, Piper chokes on a suspicious coughing fit.

Fair enough. I'd probably find the hastily improvised dumbshow hilarious, too, if it wasn't my skull, and my partner. Still, it's a disappointment when probably-Clancy shoves me toward the stateroom before I get a chance to "accidentally" step on Piper's climbing fingers.

Maxson's staring out the big front window, but his reflected eyes twitch as his troopers shove me forward and settle into formation, all four plasma rifles pointed at my back. Piper's a forgotten addendum, tucked away behind them as discretely as one of her rare published retractions. I catch her gaze in the window and shake my head minutely as she leans forward, her unrestrained hands drifting higher than her hips.

Maxson's eyes twitch again; he's seen our flicker of communication.

"Hello, Arthur," I say quietly, making eye contact with his reflection.

"Freis," he greets in return - _no longer "Nora," "my dear" or otherwise_ \- but doesn't turn to face me.

We wait out a little meditative stretch watching each other's reflections, gauging exactly how badly this is going to go. His face is ruddy and near-immobile with banked fury, but the brows are anxiously pinched together rather than lowered in a pure glower, and I'd bet the farm - well, maybe not Abernathy, but definitely Oberland - that he's regretting the amusement or inexperience or both that led him to accept a competing faction leader as a subordinate. Especially when that faction's grown from a few dozen hard-luck cases to much of the Commonwealth's population, and heavily armed at that.

Dammit, Preston was right about retaking the Castle and all its old artillery. I owe him a Quantum.

I clear my throat and raise my eyebrows, earning a glance from Maxson, but when I twist to pointedly bring up my restrained hands, he shakes his head and turns away again.

"Fine," I reply quietly and drop to one knee, then carefully sit on the carpet with my hands trapped under my butt.

The knights lean back, dropping their weapons to the new level of my head, uneasily exchanging glances. Maxson turns, brow now lowering into a properly uncomplicated glare. "Freis, by the Codex…what is this foolishness?"

A manoeuvre that would be a hell of a lot easier in my 111 jumpsuit, or (while I'm dreaming) the 16-year-old body that learned it, but he doesn't have to know that. And I certainly won't have to tell him if my shoulders won't stretch and my legs won't tuck in tighter, or the loose bottoms of my 200-year-old fatigues rip at the crotch and come along for the ride.

But they do, and they don't, and when I rock back onto my spine, whip my cuffed hands under my ass and legs, and jump to my feet with hands now restrained in front of me, it might even look like I'm not a wobbly no-longer-young-lady who whimpered her way through labour less than a year ago. My guards shift, raising their weapons again, but as Maxson only watches, expressionless, while I fish a bobby pin from my squirrel's-nest hair and break it in half, Mrs Nora Freis lives another minute on two legs rather than as a feebly bubbling goo puddle.

Handing the newly picked handcuffs to Maxson and rubbing my strained wrists, I silently breath a prayer to St Jude to look after my mother, who's probably teaching angels how to break a choke-hold in exchange for a bottle of the good stuff God hides behind the celestial throne.

"You should be in front of a firing squad." Maxson's voice is steady and low as he tucks the handcuffs in a jacket pocket and drifts back to the window, as if we're mapping out neighbourhood elevations over our third round of highballs.

"That's a valid perspective," I reply with the same mildness. "If, as a strategy, not particularly in line with your overall plan for the Commonwealth."

"Unlike welcoming outsiders into our ranks, who then use this access to destroy us from within?"

"'Shield yourself from those not bound to you by steel, for they are blind', you mean?"

Maxson's long legs carry him across the stateroom in two strides, setting that mountain of a face inches from mine. "You honestly dare to quote the Codex at me, after threatening to cripple our vertibird fleet?"

"Except even that command's followed by: 'Aid them when you can'," I persist, sidestepping the small issue of my own delinquency.

"'But lose not sight of yourself'," he finishes for me. "And it's even less ambiguous elsewhere: 'We do not help them, or let them in. We keep knowledge they must never have.' I follow Lyons' tradition in trialing outsiders, not our law - you'll find no shelter in the Codex's scrolls."

"Oh, you don't have to tell me how hard it is to live by a creed that contradicts itself every other page," I tell him. "I was raised Catholic. Good old Sacred Heart…they kicked me out of Sunday School two years running."

"The Codex is no old-world superstition," he rumbles, eyes narrowing dangerously.

"But it does derive from pre-war authority," I insist. "Specifically, the United States Army in which Roger Maxson held the rank of Captain."

And because everyone loves a smart ass, I can't help adding: "Service number 072389."

Maxson takes a step back, giving me a tight, appraising look, and I can almost hear the thought: _Synth?_

"No," I answer his unspoken question. "Just a good memory for names and numbers, particularly those that might make a handy passcode only one other person could guess. I was a lawyer before I left the vault, specialising in military legislation. In fact, my husband and I were officers in the same army as your ancestor - 108th Infantry Regiment, in his case."

"Yes, that's very impressive," Maxson barks with a harsh chuckle. "While I tamed the Capital Wasteland, you were playing toy soldiers in vault corridors."

The guards laugh along with him, their weapons lowering fractionally.

"Not me," I shrug, thinking: _And Nate would worship this guy_. "I was warming a desk chair, working on a computer with access to the old Library of Congress' legal deposit. It was a lot like my first day on the Prydwen, funny enough: left unsupervised with time to peruse the ship's entire archive, if I so desired."

"And you'd have found nothing there to support your terroristic actions earlier today," Maxson rumbles, his shoulders rolling back just a touch. Good…he's relaxing now, increasingly sure he'll be able to dole out an appropriate punishment, one I'll accept to start the journey back into Steel's good graces.

"I also found nothing to contradict the laws regulating military use of civilian contractors," I return quietly. "Specifically, that those injured in the course of a mission are entitled to the same medical care as the enlisted troops they serve with."

"Those laws died with the men who served under them," Maxson says, looking at the ceiling with an impatient sigh. But those big shoulders are tightening up again.

"The Brotherhood's based on the structure and ethics of the military the first Elder served in," I reply, keeping my own voice mild. "He drew his authority - and thus his son's, his grandson's, all the way down to yours - from not only his rank but his adherence to the ideals his people served. That's why the Brotherhood still serves a greater good, and incidentally doesn't torture prisoners, or experiment on captives, unlike other modern factions that make a claim to the same legacy - "

"Yes, Freis, you have impressed us all with your extemporaneous rhetoric," he interrupts, lips curving at my wide eyes, and I risk looking over my shoulder at Piper. She mouths, _extemporaneous rhetoric?_ to me, eyebrows reaching for her hairline. "Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that your pre-war laws have any validity in terms of the present situation - "

"Both MacCready and Cait are on Danse's list of preferred civilians," I interrupt, "and have been granted access to the Prydwen in the past without my escorting them, ergo the precedent implies - "

"Latin will not be tolerated." Maxson raises a warning finger. "As I was saying, assuming that your…contractor…was entitled to medical care, why did you feel the proper response was anything other than the application of this impressive argument?"

"Because Mac was bleeding out while I tried that - granted, with a somewhat baser vocabulary than presently - and your knight wasn't open to either listening or allowing anyone past to find a higher authority than his gatling gun. I skipped ahead to a school of rhetoric he'd hear."

"Threatening to incapacitate not only our entire vertibird fleet but the flight command system, as well?"

"No loss of life, fixable damage to equipment," I shrug. "I've taken worse in friendly fire just patrolling with your troops. And it did get command's attention, bringing out Keel and Cade."

"So, because your terrorist threats gained the outcome you desired, I should applaud them?"

"No," I sigh, rubbing the bridge of my nose. "You should train your goddamn troops not to swing their cod at an ally and comrade at all, let alone when lives are at stake. You want my admission that I was wrong? Of course I was wrong! But I was forced into drastic action, and then into making a deal on my contractor's behalf that he's…not going to be happy with - "

"Your…'contractor'," Maxson echoes, the inverted commas hanging in the stuffy air between us, his expression carefully neutral.

"MacCready," I nod, as if Maxson only wants to confirm _which_ of my contractors is involved. The "hysterical girlfriend" card isn't one I'm willing to play…yet…and I think Maxson won't stoop that low without an opening, even if there's any anger left over after the threat to his base for the small loss of a front-running "Mrs Arthur Maxson" contender dropping out of the race. "Injured while carrying out our assignment to eliminate the behemoth Swan, triaged and prepared for treatment by knights equal in rank to the one who later blocked our entry to the Prydwen. Aside from that single knight's actions, all indications were he'd be treated."

"Implied…indicated…it's interesting how you use those words to mean 'promised', Freis." Maxson crosses his arms, lifting his chin.

_Shit_. "It's not promises that matter in law, but precedent."

"You seem to be depending on a naïve - _charmingly_ naïve, but nonetheless mistaken - assumption that your archaic perception of law-based order has any role outside your vault, let alone as a binding force," Maxson smiles.

"And that would be why you had me summarily thrown off the flight deck," I smile back, "with Piper on my flailing heels, to prevent any perspective on my execution but the Brotherhood's reaching the Commonwealth."

Piper pushes between two of the knights. "For the record, I barely know this woman, and am renowned in Diamond City for my fair and balanced coverage of controversial issues. In fact, I could probably make the time to get your personal perspective on - hey!"

Maxson gestures for the guard wrenching the notebook from Piper's hands to stand down. "You're standing in front of me now because an Elder doesn't have the luxury of hasty - if satisfying - retribution."

"Almost as if capricious judgements enforced without oversight would violate some kind of social contract with the Commonwealth residents? The folk you need to accept your authority voluntarily, and damn soon?"

Maxson's lips tighten. "'Need', Freis? The people of the Commonwealth need the Brotherhood."

"Almost as much as you need them, if you're to approach the western Brotherhood factions from a position of strength, maybe even with shiny new Institute technology to lure them on board, rather than as a deadbeat cousin begging to crash on the couch."

The guards shift nervously as Maxson shoves his glower an inch from my nose, one's hands twitching toward the notebook Piper's busily scribbling in.

"Settle in, boys and girls," she says, sitting on the couch and turning so her notebook is out of their reach. "Maybe send a bird out for noodles - we're going to be here a while."

_Whatever buys Mac more time on the operating table, at least…_

* * *

Of all the Choice Chops Special's legendary aftereffects, weird dreams are the least dreaded. MacCready's pretty sure that'll change as soon as someone else suffers through this one: Paladin Danse in a sweat-marked undersuit sitting on the end of his cot, ankles primly crossed, sewing the seams of his old jacket back together, humming what's probably supposed to be "Right Behind You Baby". And, just to make it a real classic, from the…pointedness…of the rough blanket's texture on his junk, MacCready's pretty sure he's naked.

After a few minutes pass without Joseph showing up to demand he take a spelling test in front of whatever other kids showed up for class, MacCready has to face the worse option: somehow, this is really happening.

"Danse," he says, or tries to. It's the dry throat that the word catches in, not a stabbing pain in his jaw - _why would my jaw hurt?_ \- but he manages a croak that gets the other man's attention.

Danse sets the jacket aside and replies quietly: "Thirsty?"

He nods and turns his head, surprised at how much effort that takes. He's in one of a row of identical cots, most of them occupied by sleeping soldiers, in some kind of vault. No, not a vault…vaults don't vibrate and hum. And he's been here before, him and Cait, sneaking around while Nora reported in to various Prydwen pricks…this might even be the assigned bunk she's never used.

Danse uncaps a bottle of water and takes another pillow from one of the unoccupied beds, settling it behind MacCready's shoulders when he manages to raise himself a few inches from the mattress, _and why exactly is it so hard to move?_

"Sip it slowly," Danse orders, "even if your throat feels like a molerat's been nesting in it. That's just from the anaesthetic, and you'll be sick if you put too much in your stomach right away."

_Anaesthetic?_ he thinks, but asks the more important question as soon as he's able: "Nora?"

"How much do you remember?" Danse sighs and shakes his head, then pushes MacCready back to the mattress as he struggles to sit. "She's fine. I have the utmost confidence in her ability to talk her way out of any trouble she talked herself into."

"What trouble?" MacCready wheezes and pushes the blanket lower, determined to get up and find her, hesitating when that reveals not only a heavily bandaged chest but one arm splinted tightly against it. "Where is she? And my clothes, while I'm asking?"

Danse holds up the partially repaired jacket. "I got the impression you're particularly fond of this?"

"Yeah," MacCready coughs. "Had it since I was a kid."

"Good," he replies, picking up the needle again. "Hate to think I was wasting my time on something you'll just throw out. There's a hat that's yours, too, in Knight Freis' trunk, but the rest of the clothes Cade cut off you were Brotherhood property."

He reaches into the trunk at the end of the cot and transfers a neat pile of folded clothing to the blanket, closing it gently out of consideration for his sleeping comrades. "As is this, but we'll settle up the bill with Proctor Teagan later."

There's something jabbing MacCready in the back, and he automatically reaches for it with his left hand, hissing at the pain that shoots through his arm.

"You're due a shot of med-x in 20 minutes, if you need it," Danse tells him quietly, glancing at the woman in the next bed as she drowsily grumbles and rolls over. They're definitely soldiers, sleeping through the ship's noise - the hum of the ship's engines probably covers their hushed conversation, but does nothing to filter out the shouts and clangs of the rest of the Prydwen's crew.

MacCready reaches back with his right hand again, feeling a tug at his neck when he finds the thin disks and tries to yank them out from underneath his shoulder. They're on a chain, catching on his stubble in a way that makes the water in his stomach roil up as he awkwardly pulls them to the end of their leash to read: **Initiate MacCready, R. J.**

_No._

This is definitely a nightmare. He was just…what, walking with Nora through the Diamond City market to meet that reporter? He can still taste that Special, with a lingering hint of chalky antacids underneath.

_No._

Danse grabs a trash can from next to a nearby desk, shoving it into MacCready's good hand. "I told you to sip that water."

It's a near thing, at least until he drops the dogtags to his bandaged chest and closes his eyes, tries to think about nothing but breathing in as deep and slow as he can. He hands the bin back to Danse after the burning need to throw up passes and asks again: "Where's Nora?"

"With Maxson," Danse replies.

"How'd we get here?"

"What do you remember?" Danse asks again, and continues when MacCready shakes his head, "You had a hell of a concussion. Some memory loss wouldn't be surprising - but chances are good it'll be temporary."

MacCready shakes his head harder. There's no way he could have lost enough time for signing on with the Brotherhood to make sense, not even if he lives as long as Nora.

He's got to find Nora.

Which means he's got to get dressed, unless he wants to make a dash for it wrapped up in a blanket toga. He struggles to a sitting position, ribs fighting him for every inch, and reaches for the pile. There's underwear on top, and hysterical laughter tries to bubble out of his chest at the realisation it's not only marked on one side with the Brotherhood sigil but starched and ironed.

He wonders if skivvy-smartening is punishment duty or - god help him - a job they stick the new guy with.

"Need a hand?"

"No."

It hurts, holding his breath against those guffaws, and hurts a hell of a lot more getting his feet high enough under the blanket - his leg feels worse than when Doc Weathers put it back together a few months ago - _crap, I hope that was still only a few months ago…_ \- and the successful battle to get just the first layer on leaves him sweaty and braced against a dozen fresh alarms along his nerves.

And he still can't help but notice how soft the cloth is on his skin, like he's the first person to ever wear it.

"Again, if you'd like some help…"

"…yeah."

It should be weird, but it's not as bad as he expects, surprisingly - or maybe not so surprisingly, given how prone the Brotherhood fighters he's met are to blowing up their own team. They must get a lot of practice manhandling each other through recovery. Danse helps him sit up on the side of the bed, carefully avoiding any pressure on his ribs, and hooks the undersuit pants - almost identical to the set he's sure he was wearing that morning - around MacCready's feet so he can pull them up the rest of the way himself.

"There was an…altercation," Danse tells him quietly, unfolding a pair of Steel-logo'ed socks and tapping his knee for MacCready to prop one foot there. "The Brotherhood is sometimes not the unified force it should be."

"Huh," MacCready grunts noncommittally, as if he hasn’t already heard this straight from the horse's mouth back in D.C. He gestures to his bandages with his good hand as Danse rolls a sock on his foot, but Danse shakes his head. "No, that wasn't us."

"Then what was it?" MacCready asks, too loudly. A nearby pile of blankets grumbles.

"You'll probably remember on your own, in time. I don't want to interfere with the process by telling you what I've only heard," Danse replies, lowering his voice and gesturing for MacCready to raise the other foot. "And as I was on sleep shift when you arrived, I didn't witness the altercation itself, but the story circulating is that one of our former Outcast members…took issue…with someone outside our ranks receiving our medical supplies. Knight Freis…took issue…in return, and she's been…discussing…the matter with Elder Maxson for the last several hours. Deep breath."

MacCready obeys, bracing himself as Danse unties the sling holding his bum arm against his chest and gently works the sleeve of a soft undershirt over it, then holds the arm steady as MacCready pulls the rest of the shirt over his head and good arm. Danse re-ties the sling and steps back. "Good enough for now?"

MacCready nods, too short of breath to respond, and lies back on the pillows to rest for just a moment. Ten minutes later, he's still silently watching Danse repair his jacket with dainty whip stitches, even fixing a few of the smaller rips in the bottom. It's a strangely soothing counterpoint to taking inventory of every part of his body that feels hastily glued back together. There's most of his ribs on his left - but he's broken and healed those so often they've practically got hinges on them - the same side of his head from jaw to temple, his leg - and it feels like a clean break knitting up this time, at least - and whatever the heck he did to his arm. He can only see the fingertips poking out of the splint, bruised black, but when he touches them with the other hand, digs his nails into the skin, the pain shoots right to the tips. So all the nerves are still firing; probably a good sign.

Danse bites off the end of the thread and tucks the needle into an old cigarette case like the one Valentine carries, except of course the Paladin would never put something as base as tobacco smoke into his body. He gently shakes out the jacket and gives it a dubious look. "That's as close to whole as it's getting."

"Thanks," MacCready manages. He's never liked Danse, even when he was just a stuffed shirt wasted the boss' time with profitless assignments, let alone when he turned into a not-bad-looking guy nursing a raging crush on his girl. But it's just as plain that the man's now more than trying to make nice, from the way he keeps casually glancing at the steps and catwalks around them, turning sharply at the clomp of power armour on the gangway over their heads.

"Think you can eat something before your shot?"

He nods and sits up, accepting the MRE packet Danse hands him with an internal groan, immediately handing it back so the paladin can rip it open for him. In a shocking display of personality, Danse reads the label on the package before returning it, asking, "What is a 'pork chop', anyway?"

"Nora would know," MacCready replies, not missing the sudden tension in Danse's jaw. "Or at least have some theories. I wouldn't ask her - she's put me right off salisbury steak."

"I'm glad you finally enlisted," Danse changes the subject, "even if I'd prefer it had been under better circumstances."

MacCready raises his eyebrows in response, wincing as the leather-tough meat puts up a solid defense against his teeth, before deciding there's no point in being cagey. "So that happened today?"

Danse nods. "One could call it a…compromise. If you were an Initiate, there'd be no argument with you receiving immediate treatment."

He clears his throat, checking the area's vulnerable points again. "After surgery, Cade…recalled an urgent commitment to run physicals on troops stationed in the airport, should Maxson ultimately not agree with this argument."

"So Nora did this?" MacCready absently touches the lump of the dogtags, hidden underneath his new shirt. It's obvious whatever happened left him hurt pretty bad, but he can't believe she'd have dragged him to the Prydwen when Doc Sun was right there in Diamond City - especially if it meant turning his coat to join the bastards that managed to make D.C. _more_ of a hellhole and pushed his friends underground…

_If 101 hears about this…_

He swallows back sudden panic, pretending the powdered gravy caught in his throat. If she hears he's with Steel, she won't come within a hundred miles of him. And they'd definitely keep Duncan with them, wherever they run, before they'd risk him forced into what she called "Maxson's fascist scout troop".

"It was Cade's suggestion, approved by Keel," Danse corrects. "But I'm certain, once you've felt the warmth of your brothers and sisters at your back, not to mention with Brotherhood equipment, you wouldn't have it any other way. And it's my hope you'll encourage Cait to abandon her irrational prejudice as well. You can vouch for Cade's skills - she'd be clean, equipped, and out in the field in no time."

"Yeah, well…" MacCready drags his good hand through his hair and trails off with a sigh. "I'm not…you don't announce new recruits anywhere? Like so people on the outside would hear?"

"Why would we do that?" Danse asks with a piercing look.

He shrugs and wonders if 101 still has any informants on the inside. But if his name didn't ping any alarms or bounties when they signed him up to their little band of idiots, they probably never knew he worked for her…and hopefully any of her people that might've come north wouldn't recognise the name to narc him out to her.

But…hell. This is miles beyond the already unacceptable risk of what he told Nora. In fact, it's the level of risk _she_ lives in, taking ranks in two enemy factions and trusting she can dance through the mines of the no man's land in between, every waking hour after that. There's reasons he's just her shadow, not on point picking their way through that mess.

"As you were on my register of preferred civilians - I believe Knight Freis would use the technical term 'dibs' - you're automatically under my command, which I'm devolving to Freis. Assuming she's still a Knight and eligible for command, as I have faith she will be. I would not want to face her wrath for 'poaching'."

The corners of his lips briefly twitch upwards before drooping again, and for a heartbeat Danse's posture sags, before ripping back to ramrod straight. He clears his throat and continues. "Cait's role would be the same, should she enlist as well."

"I'll tell her," MacCready replies, once the awkward pause has stretched out too long for even him to stand it. He notices Danse scan their ambush points again and asks, "So do I have to watch my back around my new Outcast brothers?"

Danse twitches at the question and looks at him with narrowed eyes, replying slowly, "It might be best, as soon as you're on your feet, if you and Knight Freis work on clearing fresh territory for Steel."

"Where we won't run into any existing troops. Got it."

Danse shakes his head. "There's certainly no overt threat, but…"

"I've dealt with Outcasts before," MacCready replies tersely, remembering the times they tried to break into Lamplight, the supply of plasma ammo confiscated after Lucy treated one of them - for no more compensation than the pleasure of their company, as it turned out.

"Really," Danse asks, suspicion creeping into his tone. "You've got some way of knowing who on this ship was an Outcast?"

MacCready hesitates, then decides to throw the dice. He's far too deep in the brahmin flop now to alienate a potential ally with the kind of clumsy lie he'd think up through a lingering anaesthetic fog. "No, from back in D.C. They were still in the red armour and took potshots at strangers on the roads when I was a kid."

Danse, well, he doesn't light up, probably couldn't for anything less than a personal pat on the head from Maxson, but he almost looks capable of smiling. "You're kidding - the Capital? I grew up there, too. You spend much time in the city wastes?"

"Mostly outside it, on the Canterbury merchant circuit," MacCready hedges. It's a Nora kind of truth.

"You'd know Crazy Wolfgang, then?"

"I bought half my comics collection off that guy!" MacCready replies, startled into a chuckle at the little avalanche of memories that sets off. Wolfgang was one of the few merchants that bothered trekking out to Lamplight a few times a year, with a shipment of toys, books, and nuka cola to exchange for whatever the kids had stripped from the raiders and slavers who'd tried to break in since his last visit.

"I probably scavenged a few of those comics. Wolfgang was one of my regular customers before I set up shop in Rivet City with…with a friend. You must have stopped in there often, if you were a caravan guard."

"Nah, that market was too rich for my blood," MacCready shakes his head, but when Danse's almost cheery expression wilts, offers: "Got married in St Monica's, though."

Danse hesitates for a moment, probably failing to find a response related to human relationships in his Brotherhood-implanted memory banks, before asking, "Father Clifford?"

"No, the young guy, Diego."

"That was after my time, then," Danse replies, shaking his head with something like disappointment. "Clifford was still manning the pulpit when I enlisted. But, how's Wolfgang?"

"Still working the circuit, as of last year," MacCready shrugs. "Last time I saw him, he was hauling on three brahmin rather than settle down in a real shop."

And that was when MacCready was resupplying with the big ghoul who's _definitely_ a Person of Interest to the Brotherhood, so he'd better change the subject.

"Well," Danse replies, allowing a pleased expression to settle on his features long enough to blink before clearing his throat. "So, you don't need me to explain the Outcast…temperament."

"No," MacCready agrees, almost smiling in return. He could nearly forget, for a second or two, that Nora may have smashed his chances of ever seeing Duncan again to smithereens.

"Ready?" Danse asks, offering a syringe of med-x.

He'd like to say no, that he's getting out of this cot and kicking in hatches until he finds Nora, but the only way he'd have any part in that plan is if he convinces Danse to use him as a battering ram. The old meat's lying badly in his stomach and he'd probably be out cold if every part of him didn't hurt too badly to lie still.

"I'll keep watch," Danse insists, with a touch of what might be hurt feelings at MacCready's doubt, if the man wasn't such an automaton.

"Thanks," he mutters, taking the needle and finding a vein in his stomach one-handed with the ease of a former doctor's assistant, or a mercenary used to patching himself up. Danse frowns, the whisper of warmth worked up by a little shared history dissipating, but says nothing; MacCready drifts off hearing his judgment anyway: _married guy, likely junkie, and Nora picks him over_ me _?_

Voices penetrate foggy dreams of Grognak smashing through D.C., knocking over the old monuments with a giant anchor. It's an effort to swim up out of them, probably no more than an hour or two since his med-x dose given how hard he has to fight it, how tempting to just fall back, but it's her voice, Nora's voice, and he's getting some darn answers out of her. Just as soon as he sees she's ok.

He hears Danse's rumble in answer, lower and farther away.

"He looks better. Hey, are you awake? You look better. At least the big dent in your face is filling in."

He recognises the voice, almost, but can't put a name to it.

"He shouldn't be awake, given the dose Cade left for him. Does he…have a particularly high tolerance for med-x?"

"Hey, hey, Mac, shhh…go back to sleep, ok? You need to sleep."

Nora. There's pressure on the less hurt side of his face, a fleeting warmth that disappears when Danse asks another question he can't make out. He forces a deep breath into his lungs.

"Thank you, really…"

He gets his lead-lined eyelids open long enough to watch Nora go on tiptoes to kiss Danse on a suddenly flaming cheek and get her arms around his neck in a bear hug the man's desperately needed at least as long as MacCready's known him. His eyes sag closed again on Danse's bug-eyed panic, stiff arms belatedly coming up as Nora pulls away, telling him, "It's good to know someone here's got my back."

And if he had any energy at all, he'd waste it laughing at Danse's stammered response, at Nora's sharp, "What's this 'Knight Freis' crap?" as her hand's back on his face, gently moving his head to get a look at the painful side.

It's funny, because if any guy'd given Lucy the moon eyes, let alone tried to manhandle her, MacCready'd have knocked him flat. There's an echo coming from somewhere sideways in his head, _she could worry a little_ , but Nora's kinda like a winter campfire to the people she makes friends. They can't help huddling close for warmth. And it's ok, because MacCready knows if he looks over at her, even if Cait's practically curled up like a cat in her lap, grumbling that Nora better keep her roaming hands to herself, she'll already be looking back at him.

"I've cleared the debt with Teagen," she says quietly, and he breathes deep again, trying to respond, ask what the heck she was thinking, but she's still talking to Danse. Her touch moves down to his ribs, with barely a brush against his bad arm. "Got another rifle out of him - Piper, I'll show you how to use it."

"Hey, thanks! Danse, buddy, is this computer for anyone to use?"

"So long as you turn off the sound. Officers are trying to sleep here."

"No games for me, soldier boy - I've got a special edition to write."

"Any trouble with Teagen?"

A faint puff of air against his cheek. "I'm sure he wanted to charge me triple, but since we've set the precedent I can threaten to murder the entire ship and walk away on probation, we managed to settle on my usual discount."

"And we've learned today that precedent is vitally important, perhaps the _most_ important thing in today's world. Which, how exactly, you're going to explain to me again?"

A sigh. "After nine rounds of legalise with Maxson, the only words I've got left are one-syllable grunts and jerk-off motions."

"That's exactly the level my readership will appreciate."

The blankets move back over his chest, tuck themselves under his chin, and there's warm breath against his ear: "Looks like you came through in one piece, Mac."

"I'm going to get some rack time, but will be joining the troops in the Common at oh-six-hundred, if you'd like a ride…?"

"Appreciated."

He focuses on the erratic clacking of keys, wriggling any body part that acknowledges the order. At first it's just his toes and fingers - setting off fireworks of pain in his broken arm, which he grimly chases, burning off more of the opiate haze - until he can open his eyes again.

Nora's sitting next to the cot, back against the railing, face resting on the crossed arms holding her knees tight to her chest, and he doesn't know she's asleep until she jerks her head up with a snort at his croaked, "Hey, Nor."

"You should be asleep," she admonishes, then backs up to: "Hey, Mac. How're you feeling?"

"Hard like steel. Sharpened to an edge. Remembering the fires we were forged in." He bites the words off as hard as he can around a tongue that's happy enough stuck to the roof of his mouth.

"Yeah…" Nora rubs her eyes, dragging the word out. "About that…"

"Yeah?"

"I repeated all that on your behalf. And made your head nod." A familiar woman in a flat cap breaks in from the desk across the room, turning away from the computer and hissing _shhhh!_ back at the chorus of shushes from the other cots.

"It wouldn't hold up in court," Nora protests tiredly.

"What fu…what court?" MacCready shoots back.

"Oh, you just wait - Maxson will have a whole legal system in place before sunrise, just to protect himself from Blue."

_Blue?_

"Piper…" Nora warns over a louder wave of shushes, and the other woman pulls an exaggerated shrug before returning to her typing.

"Nor…"

"I know, I know. Believe me…" She leaves off rubbing her bloodshot eyes to dig at the back of her neck.

He touches his tags, whispering, "These have my actual name! You couldn't even - "

"Danse knows your name."

"If she hears about this…" He pulls the tags in front of his face, reading the name and rank again. "I'll never see Duncan again. You get that, right?"

"We'll handle it!" she snaps, then takes a deep breath. "Danse said your memory cuts out this morning?"

"Yeah," he replies impatiently. "Us going to meet…her, I guess, Piper?"

Nora grinds her fingers into her eyes again. He'd smack her hand away if he could get his arm to move more than a few inches.

"Skip to the end…" she mutters. "We took on Swan. He collapsed a building out from under you."

_A building?_

"I called in Steel, they dug you out…stimpacks weren't going to cut it. Had to move you quick, flew you up here, and one of my beloved 'brothers' tried to make a point about outsiders, using your life and his gatling gun."

"You had pulse grenades," he says slowly, getting a flash of her pushing one in a knight's helmeted face.

"Took them from the vertibird," she confirmed. "Had a bad feeling. All damn day, actually. So, long story short - too late! - slight hostage situation arose. Ended with you in surgery and me in a friendly chat with Maxson. And now everything's peachy keen."

"Except…" He shakes the dogtags at her.

"If there was any other way - "

"You _always_ think of another way."

She lets her head fall into her hands again, speaking into the space between her knees. "Well, I did offer to fuck Maxson in exchange for saving my boyfriend, but as he's only in the market for a dynastic brood mare, he kindly declined."

MacCready flinches from the image that brings to mind, which she probably intends, but also the reminder that she threw away a negotiating edge when she took up with him and didn't keep it quiet. There's definitely others who'd give their left arm to be in his place, who could be more use to her…but that doesn't mean he's got to be grateful. "So those were the only two options you could come up with? Really?"

"Unfortunately, most of my brain was tied up running in little circles, chanting oh god oh god oh god."

The other woman turns around in her chair again, whispering this time: "Also, the snipers."

"Yeah," Nora nods into her cupped hands. "The snipers. They were in place by then."

"They had snipers on you?" he asks, trigger finger twitching at the thought. "Their golden girl, after all their 'brother' and 'sister' crap?"

"I had grenades on them. Hey, in terms of family awkwardness, it had nothing on Thanksgiving with Nate's family when he announced his resignation as a mere Captain." She probably means to sound flip, but her throat hitches on her husband's name. "If the General'd been armed, forget negotiating. He'd have stepped over my smoking pumps to carve the turkey without a how d'ya do."

_She's done in_ , he realises, wondering how long it's been since they left Diamond City. He's not done with this, not by a long shot, but there's too much he doesn't know and they're both too exhausted to get into it without bloodshed.

"You've got my apologies if it's just become obvious that I'm a fraud. I get lucky sometimes, but when we're counting on my brains, you or me or both of us get pancaked. Figured you'd noticed that already."

"Nor, come on…"

"Look, if we're going to part ways over this," she interrupts without looking up, "can it wait until morning? I'd rather end it on better terms than I'm capable of right now."

"Truce, then?" he asks quickly, trying to sound like she hasn't knocked the wind out of him.

She nods without looking up, crossing her arms on her knees and laying her head on them, facing away. He rolls on his side - which, how the heck did that take every scrap of energy he's got? - and reaches over to tangle his fingers in her hair. She stiffens at the touch, then relaxes when he gently digs his fingertips in between curls.

He clears his throat and forces out the whisper: "Thanks."

She nods and returns with a quiet: "Sorry."

He keeps his eyes open long enough to see the rise and fall of her back smooth out, aside from the occasional suppressed hitch, and feel her neck loosen up in genuine sleep five minutes after she pretends to go under. The damn tags have fallen between the pillows and his back, again, digging into his shoulder, but he's not letting go of her to take them off.


	5. Chapter 5

I thought there'd been a crick in my neck after sleeping sitting up - or, more accurately, slumped against the hard frame of the cot, creating an impressive stalactite of drool underneath one of the springs - not stabbing paralysis between the back of my head and my ass. Woken by the shift change and automatically scrambling to my feet, I nearly pitch forward to the deck like one of the doddering politicos who refused to take a seat from a "pretty young lady" on the Metro rush hour.

Someone nearby guffaws, and my eyelids are refusing to peel open, and now that I've staggered to a 90-degree approximation of upright my knees are ringing in complaints too, and…right, there was yanking rubble off of Mac, and clinging to the vertibird deck, all topped off by my Houdini party trick that, until yesterday, wow'ed 'em every time. My back muscles are on strike for at least the rest of the week.

I try to straighten up again, more gently, but it's no good. My back's stuck in a dowager's hunch. "Well, fuck fuck fuckity fuck, good morning world."

I flinch a little at my own words, expecting Mac's disapproving grunt, and force my eyes open when it doesn't come. The cot's empty - no, he hasn't scarpered, his bag and boots are still under the bed, and if we're due any luck at all he hasn't been hauled off by disgruntled Outcasts - while Piper's curled up in the one beyond, fresh as a daisy and still laughing at me.

"Well, good morning to you too, princess."

The Brotherhood troops around us are mostly local, from the accents, and no older than Piper - initiates rather than the knights I suppose I'm now entitled to bunk down with…or will be again, once Maxson lifts my probation. They stretch and trade grumbles and dress with no concern for the mixed-gender company, and for the first time in a decade (give or take a couple centuries) I'm actually nostalgic for basic training, for the friends briefly made there before they disappeared into the fog of Anchorage and Nanjing and Shantou.

The nearest, a young man who probably shaves once a month whether he needs to or not, gives me a friendly nod and, at my grimace as I try again to stand up, calls over his shoulder, "Spektor!"

A burly teenager two cots down finishes zipping up her undersuit and snaps at me through an accent with a foot on both the Bobrovs' and Moe Cronin's home planets, "Stahp! You're making it worse. Sit."

There's a caduceus worked into the Steel logo on her shoulder, twin snakes winding around the sword, so she’s a medic, or at least a trainee. She pokes roughly at my back, declares it, "Good: strain, not tear," and with just the pressure of her thumbs on either side of my lower spine, twists me back and forth more wildly than I ever managed on a dance floor.

"Must relax your muscles, let suit do the work. Can tear muscle fiber when you tense against it."

The handful of initiates who've gathered to watch nod in agreement. I twist my lips into something like a smile at them through the pain Spektor's wringing out of my torso and shake my head. "It wasn't my power armour, just trying to pick up a building all on my own."

"That'll do it," the first young soldier agrees in a slow Southie accent, making me wonder exactly what Maxson puts his recruits through in basic. He shares a glance with the other lookie-loos, one of whom nudges him with her elbow. "And your, ah, run-in with Knight Pachis?"

"Run-in?" I snort. "Sure, let's call it that."

A nervous titter runs through the initiates, who almost in unison check for higher-ranked witnesses before drawing closer. The young initiate persists, "Or a fight?"

"No fight," I shake my head, flinching as cold fingers touch the crown of my head, but it's just Piper.

"You've got a nice goose egg up here," she tells me.

From the ceiling outside Maxson's stateroom, I remember. Nothing to waste a stim on. Half a bottle of aspirin wouldn't go amiss, but no matter how many drug stores and Super Duper Marts we scav, I've never found a single tablet. Must have been a lot of headaches in the first years after the bombs landed.

"They don't throw you in a brig for not fighting," the initiate insists.

"They do for swinging a half-dozen pulse grenades by their pins around the most sensitive part of the ship," I sigh, lowering my voice. "Which, as much as everyone was kind enough to pretend would go anywhere but overboard or blow at my own feet if I tried to flick them back over my head, was barely even a credible threat."

"Probably," the initiate nods, sharing a glance with his team. "Should've kept it down to two, one in each hand, so you'd be sure to take out one vehicle on both sides."

"Yeah, or just blow one bird right away and then threaten the rest. They'd believe it then," pipes up another from her bunk, threading a lace through the rivets in her combat boot with casually vicious yanks.

"Not showy enough, in the first case, and far too effective in the second," I croak, suppressing a gasp as Spektor finishes off with a particularly brutal twist. "The point wasn't actually to effectively damage the Prydwen, just escalate the conflict past that ass Pachis to someone reasonable. It's not a tactic I recommend, in any case."

Spektor has me cross my arms in front of my torso and, gripping my elbows from behind, slowly lifts me off my feet until the tight knots in my back finally ease. The younger troops idly watch the process, debating a breadth of ideas on how to best disable the Prydwen that cannot possibly have come out of a few minutes’ contemplation this morning.

It's probably best these soldiers spend most of their time on ground missions, away from the higher command levels that resent the local interlopers.

Spektor flicks open her medkit and picks out a bottle, its jaunty purple and orange logo faded to an almost unrecognisable smudge: Super Duper Mart Ultracodeine!

"Where did you get that?" I breath, fingers reaching for the holy relic of their own accord.

Spektor smacks my hand away. "Out in Springfield, safe below a Walden Drugs. Quite rare."

I'd just put two bottles in the bathroom cabinet a few weekends before the bombs fell, bought on a Columbus Day Sale coupon clipped out of the Bugle. It should have been plenty to shore up Nate's bad shoulder through at least Christmas, and then we could stock up again in the January sales. Maybe even get the brand-name version, for once.

"One now," Spektor orders, handing me a yellowed pill and bottle of water. She hesitates, doubtfully rattling the bottle next to her ear, before handing me another. "For tomorrow."

"What do I owe you?" I ask, but she waves me off.

"I'm not that _zalupa_ Teagan," she says, and rolls her eyes before continuing sardonically: "Now I recommend you rest up - at least two days in bed, and a week before joining any action more strenuous than wiping your ass."

The other initiates laugh as I automatically shake my head, using my newfound mobility to - carefully - pull our packs out from under the bed.

"Right. I treat you for _my_ health, I see. As usual."

"I've got to find Mac."

"He's up there," Spektor tells me, and he is, leaning on the railing, watching us with a blank expression that cracks into a strained smile when our eyes meet. His face is…better, at least. Not as badly bruised as mine was after Doc Weathers stimmed it back together, but not far from it. Piper was right, though - the big dent in his forehead's gone, at least.

It's difficult to look directly at him, once the urgency of confirming he's here, safe, reasonably in one piece, passes. He tries to catch my eyes, I think, but the bruises hide his expression.

He's careful coming down the stairs, leaning hard on the raining, and allows (albeit with a startled glance) one of the other initiates to help him to the cot, settling next to me with a breathless _fewph!_ The holotags bounce against the damp cotton of his undershirt, left out as if he's just lost a long staring contest with them. His good shoulder brushes mine, then settles against me, but that might just be the sag of the old mattress.

"How're you feeling?" I ask, as if it isn't obvious from his laboured breathing and flushed skin.

He shrugs, then admits, "Stim-sick. Should have eaten more last night."

His hair's damp; he's gotten most of the blood out of it, as much as he could reach one-handed.

"There's more MREs in my trunk." He wrinkles his nose but nods. "I know. They were pretty terrible even back when…in the vault."

Another one of the initiates snatches the MRE away before he can tear it open. "Don't eat it cold. We've got a hot plate to boil them in."

Spektor kneels in front of him, grabbing his bad knee and moving the leg back and forth. He grunts more in irritation than pain, giving me a startled look, and she nods in satisfaction. "Healing well. Now the arm."

The other initiates gather round in a tight circle, forcing Piper to lean over Mac's shoulder to watch as Spektor jabs him with med-x, gingerly unstraps the brace and unwinds bandages. I suppose in the wasteland, the revelation of a really bad wound is the entertainment equivalent of Ralphie the Robot's season premier. They share a sigh of impressed gratification at the bruise-mottled but straight arm revealed, one soldier pointing out the suture work where bone fragments had punched through the skin.

"Now, you get down to it, _that_ is what I joined up for. You think the Commonwealth's got care like that anywhere else?"

Mac turns to me with a frown. "That's…uh…I should remember getting hurt that bad, right?"

"Your pack and gun protected your back, at least," I shrug, trying to sidestep the question. It’d be just as well if he never remembers that pain, or the knights who helped pull him out idly discussing how much of his arm Cade would have to amputate. "Good thing you packed all that raider junk in there as cushioning. I've got the pieces of your rifle in my bag. Maybe Sturges can fix the barrel, but...the rest might be scrap, I’m afraid.”

"I thought it was just broken," he says, watching Spektor stim his elbow, carefully moving the arm straight as the medication works. The destruction of his beloved rifle barely seems to register.

"Very broken," Spektor confirms, wrapping it in fresh bandages. "But healing. Will take time to build strength again in arm and hand once bones fully knit together. So: rest, yes? No running out to wrestle super mutants?"

Mac shakes his head, gingerly accepting the hot MRE from another initiate, and Spektor sighs. "Of course. So considerate, my patients, ensuring I get so much practice!"

He rips the MRE open with his teeth and tips some of the steaming slurry inside into his mouth, wincing at the heat or taste.

"Duncan loves these," he tells me quietly, after swallowing with a sour face any three-year-old would be proud of.

"These?" I echo inanely, mentally throwing my “awkward truce period” strategy (with Mac's son at the very top of "Topics to Avoid") in the bin and preparing to rebuild it from scratch, depending on which thorny path the conversation takes.

"Yeah, he'll eat pretty much anything, so the taste isn't a problem, and slurping soup out of a bag just seems to tickle him."

"Cute," I manage.

His soft _yeah_ cuts off with a grunt as Spektor roughly snaps the braces back around his bandaged arm, and I'm grateful, in a worst-human-being-ever way, for the interruption before I can put my foot in it.

"This barge got a latrine?" Piper asks me. "Or a head, I guess, since it's a ship?"

Spektor's working on Mac's neck now, rolling it from side to side as he tries to eat the rest of the sloppy MRE, to the initiates' amusement. He should be safe from any Outcast retribution for a little while.

"Come on. And how'd you even know it's called a head?" I ask, leading her up the steps.

"I told you, I've got a dictionary," she says proudly. " _And_ most of a thesaurus. So if you want a synonym for any word starting with F to T, I'm your girl."

"That covers all the really good curses, at least. Although…I wouldn't mind a flip through them sometime, if you don't mind." It's pathetic how appealing the idea is, revisiting all the pre-war words I haven't heard in months.

"Sure!" she chirps. "You can even underline your favorites, and I'll work them all into an article for you. No one else will know why I've called the mayor, uh, say, 'phlegmatic', but we will. Oh, we will."

"You're a strange one, Piper. Never change."

I sleepwalk through a quick wash, absently offering suggestions to Piper as she reads out the rough draft of her Maxson article through the bathroom stall separator. My fatigues, which look like I starred in a horror flick right out of Starlight’s Slasher Sunday double-feature, will have to wait but it's damn good to finally scrub Mac's blood off my skin.

Yeah. If he never remembers how that happened, it'll be a good thing.

And he brought up Duncan, which means…what? An olive branch? A reminder of why he's so pissed at me? Or, actually…

I roll my eyes at the entire train of thought and duck just enough under the showerhead to rinse out my hair, holding my breath against the chlorinated stink of recycled water.

Actually, Mac's just not this complicated. Nate would sulk and hint, tactically offend to set off an argument he was sure of winning - a stupid game we were both grand masters in - but Mac mostly says what he thinks. A happy memory came to mind, so he shared it. And normally I'd have responded that we should stock up on a few MREs for Duncan, a little surprise to welcome him home. All our half-plans for adding two boys to our life, nothing set so firmly it couldn't be discarded immediately in case…

Well, in case I fail. Funny, it never occurred to me I could stumble hard enough to lose Duncan as well as Shaun.

Stinging water runs into my eyes, and I shake my head like Dogmeat after a good roll in the stream, earning a curse from Piper as droplets splatter her printout.

"You set?” I ask. “We should get back.”

“Sure,” she replies, shaking water off the pages. “Past time we fled with tails between our legs.”

Her blunt summation almost makes me smile. “You think I'll do as well with the Railroad?”

“Well, you don't have a rank with them to lose, so at least it can't go worse.”

“They'll probably just shoot at us.”

“Or turn out to be an Institute trap,” Piper frowns thoughtfully.

“That was an option?” I ask. “Damn. You're right. It makes more sense than a real synth liberation front, given how hated they are in the Commonwealth.”

“You tagging out on me, Blue?”

“No, not at all.” Our feet clomp in unison across the gangplank, and I imagine again the Prydwen brought down in flames solely by power-armour enhanced footsteps. The ship’s ambient vibration has _definitely_ increased since the morning shift started. “Actually, this would be better. Getting kidnapped at the end of this rainbow would at least put me on the inside.”

“And if they just lure us into a dead end and zap us down?”

“We'll kill them instead and steal their teleportation device. It's a win-win.”

“I like your optimism, Blue.” Piper takes the steps down two at a time. “Your brains, on the other hand, are a little more scrambled than the average vault dweller’s."

“I can't disagree there.”

We come down the stairs just in time to catch the end of the young initiate’s raucous declaration as he finishes tying Mac’s bootlace: “...at least, you get to screw your CO right back when she sticks you with the shit duties.”

Mac snorts, wincing as he catches sight of me. A few of the soldiers tense and quickly finish preparations to hit the ground. I pick up both bags, swinging mine on my back over Mac’s empty one, shifting my shoulders until the straps untangle.

“Spektor, you mind having a look in my ears? I’ve suddenly gone stone deaf.”

A handful of initiates laugh as the group breaks up, making way for the night shift to sleep and heading toward the vertibird bay in double-time. Spektor gives us both a stern pointing-to on her way past, rolling her eyes at the futility of treating her siblings in Steel.

“We should move too. Danse won't hold the bird forever for us.”

There's a little stockpile of Abernathy fruit and jerky on the blanket. Mac breaks off pieces of the melon he’s devouring and hands them to Piper and me, pointing at a cigar box next to his leg. “They took up a collection to save me from suffering through another MRE. And Spektor made up a care package.”

The melon flesh is strange, dry and silky, but at least it tastes almost right, unlike most post-war produce. "Let me see.”

I raise an eyebrow at him and Piper, finding a couple stimpacks, six med-x syringes, and an addictol ampule. “She charge you for this?”

“Not a cap,” Mac nods back, impressed. "I guess they're not all so bad, huh?”

He gets one arm through the top half of his new Steel undersuit on his own, but needs me to pull it over his other shoulder, tuck his splinted arm in close and pull the zipper around it as high as it’ll go. I do the same with his jacket, belting it below his arm, then unbuckling and redoing it again when it feels like the angle might cut off circulation.

“Don’t fuss,” he growls irritably, rolling his shoulder to settle his arm in the makeshift sling, giving me a sharp look when I actually do let go of him and step back. He leans over and, hesitating, quickly kisses my temple and whispers, “You know I don’t mean that.”

“No, you’re right.” I force a bit of a smile and tug his collar into shape. “We need to move.”

Piper’s casually drifted past the sleeping area, absorbed in pencilling changes on the sheets of her Maxson article. It's nice to know there's some situations so awkward even she won't stick her nose in them. At least until she adds a gossip column to Publick Occurrences.

Which, if she did, I'd need a subscription. Those Upper Deck folk especially must have some pretty freaky ways of passing the time.

Mac puts his good arm around my shoulders, squeezing in a quick hug before leaning on me, and no, he's not that complicated. At least not the kind of complicated that would linger in a relationship, waiting for the right moment to strike, if he was mad enough to be done with it. That's my specialty. The old me - pre-Shaun, pre-Doc  Matulewicz, pre-realisation of the American Dream - anyway.

We fall in with the crush of troops heading toward the vertibird bays, swinging wide of anyone in power armour. Outside, Danse curtly gestures for us to join him and a small squad on the first ‘bird and tells the pilot to disembark, taking the minigun himself - another privilege I’ve lost while on probation, along with the set of power armour I didn’t even know was mine once I made knight.

It's probably best I never mention to Mac that there was a spare set of armour. We don't have the fusion cores to power both of us through the Glow, in any case...and I don't want to wait until we do.

The vertibird sets down in front of the subway entrance, a stretch of concrete already crowded with vehicles. The Common’s transformed overnight into a Brotherhood base, all metal fortifications and supply tents. A couple of engineers are even setting up a water purifier in the pond as initiates dredge out cracked bones yards away. More grunts surround Swan’s body, gingerly hefting rippers and gesturing lengthwise, widthwise, and my gut tells me to get out of sight before I’m assigned the splatteriest point on monster burial duty.

Danse jumps from the vertibird, leaving footprints in the old asphalt, calling back to me, "I'm taking a team to clear the surrounding buildings. Your expertise in the local raider fortifications would be useful.”

“Ah, jumping from room to rubble digging out hopped up psychopaths all day? Tempting,” I reply wryly, “but I'm on a deadline elsewhere. We'll probably clear out a few mutie dens on the way, at least.”

Piper hops down after me, jerking her thumb toward the troops in what she means as _I'm going to get some interviews_ , but I interpret as _prepare for a fast getaway_. I give her the nod anyway; her spunky girl reporter schtick always cheers me up.

“Report in afterward on any cleared areas,” Danse allows sternly, "We've finally got the boots on the ground to properly hold new territory.”

I fire off a salute, picturing the tight scowl on Preston's face during our next debriefing. My second has plans of his own for this stretch of the city, plans that won't go well if our provisioners have to dodge Brotherhood inspections on top of the usual threats.

"Ma’am,” Danse nods to Piper, then surprises me by extending a hand to Mac. “Initiate.”

“Paladin.” Mac accepts the help down without a grumble, only nodding a curt farewell in response to Danse’s salute. The tags are still outside his shirt, their faint blue glow invisible in the cold early morning light.

“You want me to put those in my bag?” I ask quietly, waving to Danse as we cross the Common.

Mac cups the tags in his good hand, frowning, then tucks them inside his shirt. He shrugs and puts on a humorless smile. “Always said I'd be a soldier.”

His expression shifts to sharp concern. “Hey, is - ”

“He's in my med supplies box. That little guy's a survivor - you've probably got a permanent action figure-shaped dent in your kidney, though.”

He sighs in relief. "I know it's silly, but - ”

“It's not,” I cut him off, wishing I hadn't handled his son's talisman. My touch is far from golden lately. At least it didn't smoke and disintegrate in my hand.

His arm tightens around my shoulders again, a quick squeeze that turns into a convulsive grab as his foot slides into a crack in the rubble and he overbalances on his bad leg.

“Shi- ah, help. I meant ‘help’,” he mutters, gritting his teeth.

“I've got you.”

He's not heavy, but pulling him up and twisting to set his feet on stable ground sends a warning stab through the pleasant Ultracodeine numbness.

“Ow. Give me a minute here.”

He nods and leans on a streetlamp, giving me a concerned look as I stretch. “You ok?”

I grunt an affirmative, shifting our packs higher on my shoulders.

“I should’ve asked,” he starts, limping closer. “How bad were you hurt yesterday?”

“By Swan? Not a scratch. Just strained my back afterward, that's all.”

“How?”

“Being very very old and decrepit,” I sigh.

“Or?” he persists.

"Digging through rubble,” I shrug, hoping he'll drop the subject.

He seems to feel the same, biting his lip thoughtfully. “You said my rifle’s toast?”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

He nods sharply. "Couldn't use it right now, anyway. So I'll keep Shooty, since you've got a laser for Piper now?”

“And I'll reload for you? At least until my back caves again and Piper has to carry us both?” I ask sharply.

Mac lets out a slow breath before replying. “You and Piper can handle a few raiders or muties. I'll stay out of the way and not get hurt any worse - no one's ever had to carry me, and I'm not starting today.”

He limps carefully across the street and back, extending his good arm impatiently. “See? Stims are still working. This is all going to heal up as we walk. Trust me - I've been doing this a heck of a lot longer than you.”

"Look, I'm sure you're right...”

“Then let's go,” he interrupts, pointing at Shooty.

I unbuckle the holster and set it around Mac’s waist, swallowing the suggestion that he return to Diamond City, spend a couple of days winning back our walking-around money from the Bobrovs - hell, that we both go back and kill the rest of the week in a Dugout bed with a bottle of the vodka Vadim keeps in his backroom safe.

“This was my idea,” he points out.

I raise an eyebrow and tighten the holster a notch. “That in a good place, or should I move it forward an inch or two?”

“You’re not cutting me out of this,” he insists.

“You won,” I tell him. “Stop fighting.”

“Oh,” he replies, and after an awkward pause, tries a test draw on the 10-millimeter. “Yeah, move it forward a bit.”

I rearrange the holster and catch his hand. “Right, let’s find that robot.”

“It’s hard to believe, I know, but your ‘sullen loser’ silence?” He lets go to navigate around a wide crack in the asphalt, then takes my hand again on the other side. “It’s hard to tell from your ‘in three minutes, I’ll hit you with an airtight argument that also vaguely insults your manhood’ silence.”

I turn away, partially to wave down Piper, but mostly to hide the sheepish grin fighting to get a foothold on my face. She breaks off from shouting questions at the engineers in the pond and cuts across the Common, nimbly detouring around a supply tent when its guard raises his plasma pistol.

“I’ve only had 200 years to work on fighting fair,” I mumble back, putting on a stern face. “A little patience, maybe?”

He snorts and bumps my shoulder with his. “Hey, I’m not trying to sell the taxpayers a four-hundred dollar hammer for ten times that. You can put down the thumbscrews.”

“Yeah.” I don’t even try to hide the beginnings of a smile this time. Nate’s description of my old career had, at best, been _fastest pencil-pusher in the west, right hon?_

It’d be a good time to talk out all yesterday’s mess, if we weren’t walking past a cluster of paladins with faint red markings on their armour and weapons drifting to point in my general direction. Mac catches sight of them as well and nods as I pick up the pace, putting the fountain by the first marker between us and them.

“Well,” Piper says, crouching by the smashed remains of the Protectron. “I hope this guy didn’t actually have anything essential to tell us.”

“Great,” I sigh. “And here I’d thought this mission couldn’t possibly have a better omen.”

Someone's left graffiti on the seal near the robot's remains, circling A and 7. Given the lack of misspelled profanity, it’s probably a clue from our Railroad - or Institute - friends, so I make a note in my pip-boy.

“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the floating fascist fortress this morning,” Piper chides. “You're just upset because we nearly died horribly yesterday.”

“And you seem positively chipper about that. Which worries me.”

“Are you kidding?” Piper replies cheerfully. “I've got the scoop on the Brotherhood’s Commonwealth strategy _and_ the Maxson profile for next week's issue. Swan's death won't even make the front page! Yesterday's going to quadruple my circulation. Worth it!”

Mac shifts his arm, trying to scratch underneath the thick bandages. “Glad to’ve been of service.”

“Worth. It.”

“So...the robot said to follow the trail, right?” I point out before our little fellowship can fall apart in hair-pulling acrimony. “Wish I remembered where it ends.”

“You've done this before, Blue?” Piper asks, walking ahead along the brick line set in the sidewalk.

“We've crossed it in our travels,” Mac explains, then lowers his voice to ask, “College?”

I nod.

“So...more of a pub crawl than earnestly studying history?”

“I'm sure we reached the end at least once, because I remember duct-taping Nate's engineering textbooks behind a display case.”

“A display case, huh? Well, that narrows it down to half the buildings in the city.”

“You said you had a laser rifle for me?” Piper calls back.

“Technically, it's Mac's.” I hand her the new rifle, an unloved little thing without any mods or special paint.

“Which means it’s yours,” Mac offers. “Never got along with energy weapons, ever since this kid Billy...well, let’s just say that overclocking an internal capacitor is best left to the experts. I was lucky the blast only scorched my hat, and I was twenty feet away.”

“Well, I’m filled with confidence now.” She sets her feet wide and raises the sights to her eye. “So how do I use this?”

“Point the hot end toward the bad guys and pull the trigger.”

The rifle droops to point at the street. “That's it?”

“Mac's the trainer, not me,” I shrug. “Oh, except that vent on the side? That's the heat sink. Watch your fingers. And like he said, you probably shouldn't try to upgrade or even maintain it. There's a little fusion reactor inside that could blow if you open the wrong port.”

Piper sets it over her shoulder - carefully. “And here I had my heart set on another sexually charged shooting lesson. You’re killing my good mood here, Blue.”

“You...what?” Mac looks between us as Piper grins and I pretend I’ve never met either of them. “Fine. Don’t tell me. I’ll have to assume it involves a bottle of Bobrov’s Best and that guard with the human hair collection.”

“Who, Todd?” Piper shrugs. “I could do worse.”

The next stop on the trail - the Massachusetts State House, marked as L and 4 - is in fresh Steel territory, but the stretch between the Old Granary burying ground (A and 2) and Goodneighbor is thick with mutants. Mac hangs back with Piper, spotting her targets and, afterward, quietly patching up my bullet wounds and the laser burn on the back of my thigh we all pretend came from a mutie’s rifle.

“Six-oh,” Mac reads from the seal in front of Goodneighbor and rubs his forehead. “‘Railroad’. The password is ‘Railroad’. Can we just adjourn to the Rail and get you very drunk? See if that sparks your memory so we can skip to the end?”

It's a tempting thought, but… “Drunk Nora would not help this situation. Or any situation, really, that isn’t: ‘gosh, we’re just too well liked and respected here!’”

“How about introducing me to a bottle from Charlie’s top-shelf supply, then, and maybe I’ll remember for you?” Mac wheedles, checking his jacket pockets once again for the pack of cigarettes I traded to Teagan last night.

“You’re due another dose of med-x,” I counter. “Pretend it’s recreational. Let's just dump this super mutant scav on Daisy and keep moving.”

“Hey stranger!” Daisy perks up when she catches sight of Mac, then glares at me. “Thought you promised to take care of this one for me?”

He leans heavily on the counter. “You should see the other guy, Daze. How've you been?”

“Can't complain,” she smiles, sorting the muties’ guns I set on the counter into “crap” and “scrap” piles. “Any news?”

Mac stiffens at the reminder of his son’s - now potentially permanent - absence and I cringe, but he only shakes his head. “None your way either, I guess?”

“Mo was in a few days ago,” Daisy says. “She said she passed your delivery on to the Canterbury leg - Wolfgang picked it up.”

“He's good people,” Mac responds with a tight smile.

“So don't worry,” Daisy encourages, then makes me an offer: “80 caps.”

“Good enough,” I agree. “You got that in microfusion cells?”

“No counter offer?” Daisy squints at the merchandise. “What's wrong with these? Gypsy curse? Stolen from Hancock?”

 _Misapplied guilt_ , I think and shrug. “It's junk. Arguing an extra five caps out of you isn't worth the effort.”

“I like the influence you've had on her,” Daisy winks, counting out my ammo.

I give half of it to Piper after prying her away from KLEO’s stand. “But she had a beam splitter that would be perfect for this rifle!”

“Did poor little Billy die in vain? I prefer the back of my skull not disintegrated, thank you.”

The trail is harder to follow past Goodneighbor, disappearing under rubble for blocks. Piper volunteers to put her keen young eyes to use on the ground so long as I clear her a path. My pack quickly fills again with old, badly maintained weapons and armour as our stimpack supplies dwindle.

True to his word, Mac stays out of combat, ducking to cover and only shooting the muties that come directly after him. Otherwise, he lets me be the team bullet sponge, even when I miss a headshot on a suicider before it can arm its mininuke and have to run three blocks to draw it out of his and Piper's blast radius. He patches me up one-handed, only commenting like a demented basketball coach, “Good hustle there.”

“Thanks,” I reply wearily and call to Piper, “It's clear!”

I sit next to Mac by the Faneuil Hall memorial while Piper walks around the building, watching him absently practice the military signing alphabet I taught him on his right hand. Catching my look, he leaves off at J to instead spell out N-O-R-A with a tired smile.

“How's the arm?” I ask.

“Better. Still a ways to go, though.” He moves his jacket out of the way and wiggles his fingers, then jerks his chin toward the seal at our feet. “Five-R. Password’s still ‘Railroad’.”

“Well, the Institute wouldn't make it too hard to walk into their trap,” I grumble and rub my face. It itches where radioactive mutie gore splattered across me, but properly cleaning it off will have to wait until we reach the river.

“Doubt the Institute would bother with a trap,” Mac disagrees. ”This has to be Railroad. A couple of times, my friend had me sneak into Rivet City just to leave a note in the trash.”

“A dead drop?” I ask. “And you say _I_ read too many comic books.”

“So, if there's a point to this," he continues, ignoring my jab, "it's probably to prove you can sneak or shoot past most obstacles and that you can read, at least enough to memorise codes.”

“Another test?” I shake my head. "Whatever happened to interviewing candidates and checking references? I'm sure there's an appropriate business suit somewhere in the armory.”

“Found it!” Piper calls from behind the old hall.

I offer Mac a hand up and shoulder to lean on that he doesn't really need after most of a day's healing, but takes anyway.

“There’s just D and another R left,” he says, “so, two more stops.”

He’s right - there’s the Paul Revere House (where I manage _not_ to point out all the inaccuracies in Longfellow’s poem, mostly because the mutant hound chewing on my ankle doesn’t seem like a history buff), and then, finally, the Old North Church.

“Oh, right! I remember now.”

“That’s helpful,” Mac replies sarcastically, pushing open the old door with his good shoulder and letting Piper go in first.

“We were going to leave the textbooks on John Pitcairn’s tomb, since Nate’s grandfather claimed to be descended from him,” I whisper. “But, strangely enough, security wouldn’t let a gang of drunk students into the catacombs.”

“That’s probably where we’ll find them,” Mac says. “Below ground. It’s where I’d hole up.”

Inside, we're greeted by familiar gurgling growls.

"Great, ferals!” Piper observes, putting a fresh fusion cell in her rifle. “At least it’s not more mutants. You know what they say - a change is as good as a rest.”

“Aim for legs,” Mac tells her. “I'll finish them off for you.”

“I'll just have a lie-down then, if you two’ve got this?” I snark, easing past the display case that hid Nate's books a decade or twenty ago and casing the main section of the church.

There's maybe six rising between the old pews, and movement on the upper balcony. I duck behind the pews and sidle to the opposite side, where hopefully none of the undead bastards will slither down on my head, and pull the pin on a grenade.

One of them's the particularly ugly version Mac calls a Reaver, and it nearly takes my nose as a trophy, but the rest go down quickly. Piper slices through a regular feral just before it can tackle her and, wild-eyed, swings her rifle to point at the head that's popped up over the balcony.

I push her arm just as she pulls the trigger so the shot goes into the ceiling, only then consciously registering the flash of sunglasses on that face as it drops back out of sight. “Stop, it's human!”

There's the snap of old wood breaking in the back of the upper level, and running footsteps scamper across the roof over our heads.

“Or a synth?” Piper suggests through gritted teeth, following the noise with her rifle.

The steps turn into a tile-breaking slide down the far side, ending in the thump of a body hitting the street and rolling.

“He's heading toward the river,” Mac says, limping to a window and peering through the nailed slats. “Should we follow?”

“Too many places to hide,” I decide. “Either we've evicted a human with adventurous taste in roommates, or there's a synth setting up a better ambush for us than the one he had here. Let’s just find what we’re here for.”

Piper points at a lamp drawn in chalk over a corner doorway. “That looks promising.”

“Final bets, ladies and gents.” I switch out Sparky for Boomer, checking that the combat shotgun has a full drum of shells. “I've got 20 caps there's an Institute firing squad at the end of this.”

“I'll take that,” Mac replies. “Piper?”

“Neither,” Piper says, nervously reloading again. “My money's on Swan's mother, swearing vengeance on her monstrous little boy's slayers.”

I turn back to stare at her with my jaw swinging down around knee level.

“Like Grendel?” Mac laughs. “Good one!”

I dig my fingers into my eyes and ratchet a shell into Boomer’s chamber. “Grendel. Sure. Neither of you recognise the word ‘cheese’, but Dark Age poetry, you are _on_.”

They exchange a look, and Mac corrects, “No, the Grendel from ‘Grognak and the Snow Haired Women of the Wastes’?”

“Oh thank god,” I mutter. “For a second there, I was concerned for my sanity. Shall we?”

“I know what ‘cheese’ means,” Piper whispers sullenly as we creep down the stairs. “And it sounds disgusting.”

The lower level proves to hold more skeletons than ferals, and after several twists around the dank passage, we're faced with another Freedom Trail seal set next to a stone door.

“Care to do the honors?” I ask Piper, who's already spinning the outer ring, R-A-I… She's trembling with nerves or excitement, and if the password doesn't work, might just chew her way through the wall to whatever answers lie on the other side.

But it works. The stone door swings open, revealing impenetrability bright lights and the sound of scrambling feet, along with what I'm pretty sure is the clunk of a fresh magazine settling into a minigun.

“I think you're about to owe my corpse 20 caps,” I whisper to Mac, peering around the doorway.

The killers on the other side settle and fall silent as I gesture for Mac and Piper to stay back. After a long minute, there's a cough and a woman's hoarse voice.

“So, are you coming in, or are you planning to bivouac all night in the catacomb hallway?”

“Settle a bet, first,” I call back. “You Institute, or Railroad?”

There's a whispered conference on the other side of the lights, and then the same voice asks, “You went through all the trouble of finding this place...on a bet?”

“No, for information,” I reply. “The bet was just to keep things interesting.”

“So an entire day blasting your way through muties can't hold your attention?” A different woman's voice this time, one with a 5mm edge to it, and I wonder if Fahrenheit has a sister.

“Even a pleasant routine palls, if one allows it to become a rut,” I reply with exaggerated haughtiness, and sling Boomer over my shoulder, stepping into the light with my hands held out, not up. “The Institute took my son.”

“Damn,” the second voice whispers.

I press my lips together and take a deep breath through my nose, staring into the glare of the lights where Nate doesn't have a .44 in his face, where no one's taking Shaun from his suddenly slack hands.

“Either that's you, in which case I'd take it as a kindness if you kidnapped me too, or you're the only people in the Commonwealth putting up a fight against those bastards, and I want to learn how you do it.”

“That's a sad story,” the first woman says. “You got any proof?”

“I've got witnesses,” I reply, “sort of. They helped me break into the Institute tech in the kidnapper’s brain. You know Dr Amari or Nick Valentine?”

“You left _that_ out of our interview?” Piper hisses, poking her head around the opening.

“Quiet,” I whisper back, straining to make out the hushed conversation behind the lights.

“Dez!” A man's voice this time. “You're having a party and didn't invite me?”

He steps forward into the light, briefly lifting his hands to mirror my pose before moving to the side so I can make out more than a silhouette. His sunglasses catch the glare and flash as he turns.

He doesn't even flinch as Mac and Piper step forward, weapons aimed at his head.

“Stand down,” I order tersely, and they reluctantly obey.

“But that's the guy - ” Piper starts.

“I know,” I stop her, studying his features.

“Deacon! Where’ve you been?”

“Practicing his parkour,” I answer for him. Those glasses, that louche smirk...they're not just from the balcony. “It's really paying off - I could have sworn you were a giant mutant squirrel, earlier.”

He shows both rows of teeth when he smiles. “See, most people assume the fluffy tail is just for show, but you? You get me.”

“You know this woman?”

“You don't? She's kind of a big deal to the Commonwealth - Minutemen’s head honcho, knight in the Brotherhood of Steel and Maxson's bosom confidant, Goodneighbor boogieman...you need to get out more, Dez.”

“And you're that Goodneighbor creep,” I suggest, more sure of it when his grin broadens. “And that Diamond City security creep. And...Bunker Hill, maybe? Or else the man we assigned to the Hilltop provision run...which explains why that whole shipment went missing.”

“That was the brahmin’s fault,” he protests. “Got all jazzed up on mentants and insisted she could jump over the moon.”

“So you've been monitoring her?” the first woman - Dez, if this Deacon’s to be believed - asks impatiently, talking over Mac's “You know this guy?”

“You leave a trail of destruction that's easy to follow,” Deacon tells me, “and it's not like you're shy about putting on a show.”

He winks at Mac. “I think Bunker Hill was my favorite.”

“Down,” I insist, as Mac raises Shooty again and Piper automatically follows suit, and turn back to Deacon. “Glad to hear the spying gig's got it's compensations. Although, funny, I'd have pegged you for getting off playing judge and jury all on its own.”

“Ouch!” Deacon laughs. “You got any aloe vera for that burn?”

“Deacon…” Dez growls warningly.

He waves an acknowledgement in her direction and leans closer to me, murmuring, “That's what they used back in your day, right?”

 _Shit_.

Deacon jumps up the steps to rejoin his comrades behind the lights for another hushed conference before I can come up with a plausible deflection.

“What's he mean, ‘your day’?” Piper asks.

“No idea,” I reply quickly, as Mac steps in front of me, squinting into the lights. “Unless it was a very roundabout way to insult my age.”

“How do you know this guy?” Mac asks again, and the flush in his cheeks is definitely not all from his slowly healing injuries.

“He was just one of the assholes a woman travelling alone attracts,” I mutter back. “Standing too close, looking too hard...I talked to him a few times, but he always backed off. I didn’t realise it was him most if the time until just now.”

“I don't like this,” he says, holstering Shooty. “He's been getting intel on you for months, but why? We should go.”

He leans closer to whisper, “And, that time in Bunker Hill? That high up, there's no way, even from a roof with a sniper scope, that he could've - ”

“I know. It's a shot in the dark.”

“Like whatever ‘aloe vera’ means?”

“That…” I run my fingers along Boomer’s heavy stock, carefully not looking at Piper, the girl with the well loved dictionary. “That's a concern.”

“You can call me Desdemona,” the first woman announces, stepping into the light. She's probably in her forties, with tired eyes and a surprisingly on-point spy ensemble for a woman squatting among Revolutionary War corpses, and I wonder if she'd ever trust me enough to share her personal shopper. “Deacon vouched for you - one of you, at least. But I want to hear it from your own lips before I decide if you're Railroad material: would you lay down your life for your fellow man? Even if that man's a synth?”

Deacon follows her, making frantic _go on, go on_ gestures behind Desdemona’s back. He smiles again when I stare at him. As if we're friends; as if I trust his advice enough for it to make my decision.

“I'm only here to learn about the Institute.”

Deacon grimaces, throwing his hands over his head, but Desdemona silences him with a glare.

“If you wanted free information, you should have gone to the library,” she replies evenly. “Instead, you found us. Now you join us, or you join those skeletons out there. Nothing personal.”

“I guess we missed the fine print on all those seals.”

Mac shifts to flank her, pausing at the grind of a minigun spinning up. He looks over and shrugs minutely, his eyes flicking to Piper behind me, and I nod back.

“And my standing orders with Steel to exterminate all non-humans?” I challenge, stalling for a moment to think. He's right - even against a minigun in the tight corridor, chances are good he and I could back out of this, but Piper? Unlikely. And hell, we've come this far... “Why should you believe anything I promise that contradicts them?”

“See, Dez, this is exactly why you can trust her,” Deacon insists, stepping between her and Mac.

“You've said your piece, Deacon,” Desdemona says, “and I agreed it's worth the risk. You've got ghouls in your settlements, and a handful of synths - whether you're aware of them or not - even a tamed super mutant, so I doubt violating those orders on our behalf will keep you up nights.”

“And your orders will?” I throw out, not expecting an answer so much as wanting to see how she'll dodge the question.

Instead, she laughs. “Nothing so grandiose, General. We don't have the time or manpower to train you into real agents. All we expect is you'll make yourself useful, to the limited extent you can be around your other...important...commitments.”

“Oh.” I clench my teeth before I can snap back that half the Commonwealth will arm up at my command - including, apparently, more than a few of her precious synths. “That's...fortunate.”

“So?” she raises her eyebrows impatiently. “Would you sacrifice yourself for a synth?”

For some random runaway, as likely to rob or murder innocents in their path as any other desperate person? Hell, no. But… “I've caught a few bullets for my friend Nick, if that answers your question.”

“It's good enough,” Desdemona nods. “How about you two?”

“Me? No,” Mac says, restlessly moving his finger on Shooty's trigger. “I wouldn't take a bullet for Valentine. I'll happily put a few in him, if you're hiring for that gig.”

“I'm not really in the bullets business, giving or taking,” Piper adds with a brassy, nervous grin. “Although…if the synth in question is Mayor McDonough...you can tell me. It'll stay just between us, I promise.”

“Comedians,” Desdemona spits. “just what the cause was lacking.”

“Dez - ” Deacon starts.

“Wait,” Piper interrupts. “If it's not working for the Institute, if it's just a harmless synth trying to hide, of course I'd help, if I could. I'm not much use in combat, yet, but the paper - I can report on anything so long as it's true, make people care… Is that good enough?”

“Where Nor goes, I go,” Mac adds. “If she's helping synths now...I'm in.”

“If we weren’t so shorthanded…” Desdemona pulls a crumpled pack of cigarettes from her jacket and lights one, exhaling slowly through her nose. “Welcome to the Railroad. Don't fuck us over, or Glory will make sure you don't live to regret it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to any regular readers - chapter updates will likely be slow and rougher, as most writing now happens on my mobile while a newborn naps on me...


	6. Chapter 6

“Yaaaaay,” Deacon trails off and smirks at Desdemona. “No party streamers? We used to have party streamers.”

MacCready doesn't miss the slight tilt that gives away his immediate glance at Nora for her reaction. Those dark glasses don't hide as much as the jagoff seems to think. The guy’s practically dancing like Duncan with a heavy bladder, every tense muscle screaming _look at me, look at me_. Which...actually...is how people usually react, but that’s when she’s The General, the voice on the radio beacon her settlers followed to their new home, not the woman they’ve been tom-peeping through a scope for who knows how long.

It’s too easy to picture that same smirk, watching them together, and MacCready tries to swallow back the dry sourness of his throat even as he tells himself, again, that it’s an easy guess; any couple on the road most of the time will take their chances. It's logical, but doesn't stop him from running all the angles he can remember. Bunker Hill, definitely no line of sight from outside...but he could have followed them up those steps, hiding just behind the curve. Same with their usual safehouse outside Diamond City, no view from the ground or across the street, but if he guessed where they’d stop and got up to the half-intact roof ahead of them… The settlements, though, they're the worst. He and Nora’d avoided those inside more than any theoretical person hanging around just outside. Hell, at least they didn’t get that...experimental...outside of Sanctuary or the Rex, but it got harder to cling to that thought with every second that creep kept sniffing around his girl.

Nora ignores the plea for attention, instead asking Piper if she’s ok with all this and smiling tiredly at the enthusiastic thumbs-up she gets in return, prompting Deacon to push, “Not even confetti?”

“Shut up, Deacon,” someone finally says, if with weary amusement rather than a smack upside the head. She joins Desdemona in front of the lights, the barrel of her minigun throwing a long shadow across the wall. “I'm Glory, and if you've lied to us, I'll be haunting your nightmares.”

Nora misses a beat before responding, staring at the other woman with narrowed eyes, but replies smoothly enough, “Always nice to meet another one-woman army.”

He takes a closer look at Glory for whatever’s pinged off Nora's radar, but the woman seems friendly, if wary, both hands on the minigun she's let spin cold. “The man behind the curtain there is Drummer Boy.”

A cigarette butt bounces out from behind the lights, landing near MacCready’s boot. “Eh, introductions can wait until they've survived a week.”

The man's voice fades as he retreats - another long corridor and then a wider space, MacCready judges, as the echoes of his footsteps abruptly drop off. Whatever hideaway is back there, they haven't been invited into it. And their nearest safehouse is the old bakery, clear across the river...he shifts his aching leg wearily, wondering if it’d be easier to backtrack to Goodneighbor and a real bed, even if they have to take the long route they’ve already cleared to avoid any more action.

Nora shifts to watch the cigarette’s arc, raising an eyebrow at him once the Railroaders are behind her shoulder, already turning her attention back to them as he nods in reply. He bristles at the dismissive manner even as he knows - because he knows - she’s pushing him out of Deacon’s line of fire, but heck...he promised he’d stay down and let her fight them through. It was just easier to stay out of her way when they were only getting shot at.

“Well, I’ve never had a warmer welcome,” Piper jokes, smiling nervously at MacCready.

“Makes me miss Danse’s hearty cheer.” And the free bunk, drugs, and breakfast. Funny...the genocidal scourge of D.C. took him in like a lost lamb, while these bleeding-heart kooks still haven’t taken summary execution off the table. This is not how he’d thought his shortcut into the Institute would pan out.

“Don't take it personally,” Glory tells her. “We've lost a lot of good people recently and it's hit us all hard.”

“We’ll be in touch,” Desdemona cuts her off with a stern glance, jerking her head toward the rear - probably the catacomb, MacCready thinks, remembering Nora’s story.

_Guess we're not welcome to Railroad gossip, either._

“See you around,” Glory says, pausing for another speculative glance at Nora before following Desdemona.

“Hope you didn’t mind the reception,” Deacon tells Nora. “When you tango with the Institute, you’ve got to be careful of anyone new on the dance floor. Still, I vouched for you, and nobody got shot or sold out to the Institute. And Dez called those Arthur Murray lessons a waste of money!”

Nora's jaw moves before she replies. “So you’ve been stalking me close enough to be that sure I’m not their agent, or a replicant?”

“‘Replicant’? Now that’s a great word. It’s from that alien body-snatcher movie, right, the one that would have killed in the ‘77 Oscars if Hollywood had the foresight to build an Academy-themed vault?” He raises an eyebrow, then continues when Nora’s look of hostile confusion doesn’t budge. “And it’s not stalking, per se; think of it as an audition you didn’t know you were making. And you aced it!”

“So,” Piper starts, “Was she the only one you were ‘auditioning’ even when she was entirely sure she was alone? Because, if not, I can explain…”

Nora shoots MacCready an alarmed look under the cover of Piper’s distraction. He frowns back; this man knows, somehow, that Nora was alive before the bombs fell. Valentine, Daisy, even that crazy Vault-Tek ghoul who sold her the slot in the ice cube tray, none of them would have stabbed her in the back. And Nora only talks to him about the old days when they’re out in the middle of nowhere. Deacon could’ve been watching them, with a long scope, but no way could he have gotten close enough to overhear. Which leaves first-hand intel on Vault 111, and Nora’s insisted no one could crack the pre-war encryption she put on the entrance controls.

“See, in my line of work, I get a lot of tips from overheard conversations. That’s the only reason someone might find me, say, hanging around the back bathhouse vent...”

Nora flicks her eyes toward the lights before setting her face in blank irritation as Deacon turns his back on Piper. MacCready tilts his head from side to side, cracking his sore neck, and casually hooks a thumb in his holster just behind the 10mm. She’s going to try him out, one way or another. Probably not a physical attack, given they just shook hands with the Railroad, but best to prepare for anything.

At least he’s fairly sure she’s out of grenades, this time.

Deacon grabs Nora's arm, tightening his grip when she tries to shake him off, and pulls her to the side of the corridor. He sighs impatiently when MacCready and Piper immediately follow and drags her further away. Nora jerks her arm free but nods for them to stay where they are as Deacon leans close, muttering urgently.

Most of his words carry easily across the small space, the groaned “What a waste!”, the conspiring “The Railroad needs you,” the inevitable “I got a job…” He raises his voice when Nora steps back at that, continuing: “It’s perfect for the two of us - you help me out, and it’ll turn a few heads. Convince Dez to skip the apprenticeship and throw you in the big leagues.”

He drops the facade of privacy when Nora doesn't reply and glances at MacCready. “I know why you're here - why you're really here - and that you don't have much time. Do you think Nick will wait on you forever, when every day it’s more likely his only other lead’s deathclaw chow or shambling with the ferals?”

_That guard by the noodle stand...shoot. Shouldn't have let Valentine distract me._

“Yes, actually,” Nora replies with a small, hard smile. “Although the smart money's on him showing up on your doorstep if I don't return, and he's not much of a joiner.”

“So, by Desdemona’s rules, we'd have to kill him to ensure the HQ stays secret, except - oh no! - that'd be killing a synth, what an existential quandary!” He fishes a pack of cigarettes from his front pocket - MacCready’s beginning to wonder if nicotine addiction is a side effect or outright requirement of Railroad membership, and hopes he’ll be issued his official supply asap - and pulls one out with his teeth. “Which we'll never face, because you and I will be back from Lexington with Carrington’s prototype in time for lunch. You like barbecue? Drummer Boy makes a mean rack of ‘guai ribs.”

“Drop the hard sell, comrade,” Nora snaps. “I'm in, but only if my people can rest up here. A doctor to check on Mac wouldn't hurt, either.”

MacCready shifts the arm in question, wiggling his wrist as much as the brace will allow. The lingering dose of med-x - _pretend it’s recreational_ , she’d said, as if he’s messed around with the hard stuff since Duncan - keeps it from hurting, and this morning’s stimpacks have probably healed the bones. But the muscles are still too weak to grip or reload a gun, let alone shoot, and then there’s his leg, his back, his head…

So he keeps the automatic _Not without me!_ behind his teeth, no matter how much it stings to admit she’s right this time. He’d only be a load to drag through the open country between the city and Lexington. Nora can more than handle one skinny stalker on her own.

If he’s leading her into an ambush, on the other hand…

...yeah, Nora can probably handle that without him, too. They haven’t yet come across a trap she couldn’t blow wide open. Usually literally.

He really hopes she's out of grenades.

Deacon bares his teeth in an exaggerated grimace. “Yeah...see...that's not possible. Tourists don't get into the HQ. Dez’s orders.”

“I think Dez would be willing to make an exception for me,” Nora insists calmly, crossing her arms.

“They can stay upstairs, in the church,” Deacon offers dismissively.

“With all the feral corpses, and the live ones they'll attract?”

It’d be far from the worst company he’s kept, even with Nora - the mutant dens they cleaned out and camped in with Strong probably smelled worse, not that it’s a contest he’d volunteer to judge - but he lets Piper’s disgusted pout speak for both of them. If Nora can talk him onto a secure mattress for the night instead of sitting watch on a splintered pew, he'll roll with any risk she takes.

“I'm going out on a very long limb here,” she continues. “The least you can do in return is ask Desdemona for one little favor.”

Deacon tucks the unlit cigarette behind his ear and watches Nora with a small, unwavering smile, shrugging after she lets the silence stretch without a twitch. “Fine, I'll ask, but when she refuses and throws me on latrine-liming duty all week for even thinking about compromising HQ security...we're hitting the road, and they can take care of themselves like grown up boys and girls. Deal?”

“Of course,” she replies. “But I have faith in your powers of persuasion.”

Nora waits until Deacon’s footsteps stop echoing before jumping up the steps after him with a barked, “C'mon!”

“Blue…” Piper begins to question, but falls in behind MacCready when he follows without hesitation.

“Trust her,” he says, beginning to smirk as he watches Nora holster Boomer, swing her pack to the front, and bury both hands in its contents, walking into the dim space below as if she expects to be welcomed. “Unless you really enjoy bedding down in radioactive entrails.”

He quickly scans the catacomb before they step out, knowing his eyes will adjust to the dim light much faster than hers, and murmurs, “There, by the open tomb,” when he catches sight of a white coat. A doctor - Nora’s good with doctors. Most of them, anyway; he’s pretty sure Lucy would’ve only been irritated by the Maxson treatment and confused by the thread of nervous respect underneath.

She nods and steps out to intercept the older man, her attention ostensibly on the contents of her bag. “You're the doc?”

Every gun in the HQ swings on her as Desdemona shouts for someone named Pam to “Come in hot, goddamn it!”

“He said there was a doctor,” Nora insists hurriedly, halting mid-step and looking from the gun barrels to Desdemona to Deacon - leaning against the wall next to the entrance, lighter frozen at the end of his cigarette - with shocked bewilderment, slowly pulling the lunchbox with their med supplies from her bag. “You said, you said he'd be happy to - ”

“‘Happy’ to?” the doctor asks harshly, glowering at Deacon..

“Whoa, whoa,” Deacon yells as an assaultron barrels into the room, hand-claws sparking. “Pam, belay that! They're friendlies!”

“Shit,” Nora breathes with wide-eyed alarm MacCready would bet anything is mostly genuine - and only mostly, as while he and Piper have automatically drawn their weapons, she hasn't so much as twitched toward defending herself.

“Pam, stand down...for now. And Deacon,” Desdemona rounds on him. “We've covered this - I decide who gets what access, and when! Your special projects do _not_ get special treatment.”

For the space of a blink, Deacon and Nora trade perfectly blank expressions before he turns to Desdemona with a confident smile. “Dez...listen…”

The doctor, meanwhile, has spotted MacCready’s splinted arm and, with a long suffering huff, gestures for him to take off his jacket. “We're short on supplies, if you're expecting a stimpack for every bruise and scrape.”

Nora tears her eyes away from the now-placid assaultron backing into the shadows and rattles the lunchbox, replying almost timidly, “We've got our own.”

The doctor takes the box with a petulant frown, flipping it open. “And my time, of course, is - ”

He pauses and picks out the toy soldier, turning it in his hand to examine the carving before setting it on his table with an absent pat on the little head. “ - is...well, take a seat and let me see what butchery you’ve subjected that arm to.”

MacCready pockets the toy before Nora takes off his jacket and undersuit, her head tilted to follow Deacon’s rapid argument.

“Look, Dez, it's not every day we get a new recruit with a - literal! - army at her command. Just this once, I’d say making a good impression is a mutual onus.”

“You have an army?” The doctor raises an eyebrow. “Or is that more of Deacon’s usual bullfeathers?”

_Bullfeathers? Stealing that._

“The Minutemen,” she confirms and taps the brim of her helmet. “General Freis, at your service.”

“Doctor Carrington, apparently at yours,” he returns with heavy irony. “Nominally second in command here, even if Desdemona can't be bothered to consult with me before taking on a recruit with such baggage.”

“I presumed from his attitude that Deacon was her second - ” Nora breaks off with a sheepish grimace. “My apologies, Doctor. I've made rather a mess of my first impression. Anywhere you can set me straight, I’ll appreciate it.”

 _Laying it on rather thick, dear,_ he thinks in an impression of her Super Duper Mart Housewife voice. It'd made her laugh after their last debriefing with Maxson, and she’d replied in the same tone, _That boy is dry toast - takes a_ lot _of buttering up_.

_You’ve lost me again._

_Is it the “toast” or “butter”? Forget it, you can’t go your whole life without either one, it’s just too tragic to contemplate. Butter, I think I can make with brahmin milk, but real bread...you ever heard the word “yeast”? No? Shit. Shoot. I said ‘shoot,’ dammit. Darn it._

_Are you you going to sulk as long as the time that behemoth kept us from scavving the old Slocum’s Joe?_

_No, but right now I’d trade Sanctuary and every settler in it for a bagel and schmear. Which I’d split with you, lucky man, if you could stand the company of such a moody broad._

_Only the rest of my life. After that, you’re out of luck._

He wishes there was time, and privacy, to make up properly. It doesn’t feel right, splitting up before they’re back on good terms.

“And Dez, need I mention, she killed Kellogg, and with a laser rifle that couldn't cut my toenails!”

“This isn't terrible work,” the doctor mumbles grudgingly, stretching MacCready’s arm out straight and testing the strength in the elbow (his patient gritting his teeth against the complaint that would undo Nora's flattery) before picking a stim from their supply. “Or a terrible attitude. Help me here.”

“That only shows a talent for assassination, not dedication to the cause.” Desdemona pins Piper, who's sidling casually toward an unlocked terminal, with a glare and looks to Nora. “Nothing personal.”

“Noted. And I happen to agree.” Nora braces MacCready’s hand on her shoulder as Carrington snips away bandages and glances at him again, a more speculative expression this time. He tilts his head slightly toward Dez and shakes it - so this stranger, when forced to choose between Nora and his own people, immediately backs Nora. Which is always the smart call, but he shouldn't know that. It's interesting.

Except the right word isn't “interesting” so much as…"worrying”.

“How did you injure yourself?” Carrington asks, examining the sutures on the inside of his forearm before snipping the first with surgical scissors.

“Building fell on me,” MacCready replies tersely. “Or so I'm told.”

“Memory loss?” The doctor grunts an affirmative to himself without waiting on an answer, removing Cade’s stitches from the mostly healed skin. “It may return, or it may not. This arm, on the other hand…you, take his hand, and pull as the stim takes effect, pull hard. You, hold steady. This _will_ hurt.”

He's not kidding, and it's a fiery itchy pain as newly stimmed muscles heal against the stretch. MacCready loses track of Deacon’s argument as the burning drags on, but when the doctor finally calls time, he's able to push his arm through the undersuit sleeve himself.

“You won't need to keep that splinted, now, so long as you don’t strain it.” The doctor preens a little at Nora's wide eyes as MacCready struggles to get a grip on the zipper. “Hand muscles are too delicate for that trick, though, so you'll have to build them up manually. Find a baseball or something to squeeze.”

Nora pushes his hand away and zips it closed, resting her fingertips in the hollow of his throat. He shivers at the unexpected touch.

She turns her falsely open expression to the doctor but he's already at his chem station, adding the used needle to an autoclave for recycling. Her face is guarded again as she passes him his bag with the flap open and shifts most of their food and water into it. She palms a bottle of buffout from the lunchbox, quickly enough that someone who hadn’t taught her to dip in the first place would probably miss it. He catches the meds box before she can add it to his bag, picks out the addictol inhaler Spektor gave him, and pushes it firmly into her hand.

They exchange irritated glares, silently arguing it out in the space of a breath - _You’re on med-x. / I can sleep without it, and buffout’s nothing to mess around with_ \- before she adds it to her bag. She takes his hand and again, there’s that hesitant touch, her fingers gently tracing his.

“Got you shanghaied twice in 24 hours,” she murmurs, glancing at Deacon as he backs away from Desdemona, arms raised in exaggerated surrender. “That has to be some kind of record.”

“I think this one’s on me,” he whispers back, accepting the sideways apology. “Should have known they’d be as paranoid as the cell down in the Capital.”

She hums tiredly at that, neither agreeing nor arguing, and moves her fingers against his palm in the sign for _recon_. He squeezes her hand, acknowledging the command to suss out as much as he can of the organisation while she’s gone, weakly tightening the grip as she pulls away to follow Deacon. There's too much he wants to say to her, suddenly, before she goes on without him, but all he manages is, “Watch your six.”

“Always.”

Piper joins him, watching Nora veer almost into a wall as Deacon leans in close, raising a fist and demanding, “High five!”

“Well, that’s going to be an awkward trip. He clearly can’t stand the sight of her.”

MacCready frowns, absently rubbing the new, throbbing muscles in his forearm. “Clearly.”

“Should we follow in case she needs backup?”

“Nah. She’ll kill him herself if he tries anything.” He unholsters Shooty and pops out the clip, testing whether his hand is strong enough to push it back in. Not quite, as it turns out.

“Do you think that’s likely? I mean, he’s obviously more into her than the Railroad, which means he’s either not a true believer in saving the poor widdle synths, or worse, he is, and access to Nora is _still_ more important.” Piper pulls out her notebook and scribbles speculative bullet points. “Which could mean...what? Institute spy’s always a safe assumption - or an Institute replacement infiltrating the Railroad? Maybe they’re on to Nora’s plan and want to take her out before she becomes a real threat. Or, hell, maybe the entire Railroad is just an Institute front, except for this guy, and he thinks he can enlist her in a two-man suicide mission. Or - ”

“Thanks, Pipes. I wasn’t entirely sure that tracking them down was the worst idea I ever had, not when it was competing with that revival of Pyramus and Thisbe for 8-year-olds, but you’ve settled it.” He shifts the gun to his bad hand and, bracing it against his hip, manages to force the clip back in.

“Or...maybe...he’s just a _huge_ Minutemen groupie and wants to wear her fancy General's hat,” she replies with an apologetic grimace, tucking the pencil behind her ear.

“Find out,” MacCready tells her, noting the slight hitch in the slide as he chambers a round. It’ll need a good cleaning once they’re back in safe territory...which he’s pretty sure this isn’t. “That’s our job. Nora can handle hers.”

“Sure,” Piper nods, face scrunched with worry.

“So…that ‘cheese’ thing she misses so bad,” MacCready starts, hoping to distract her. “Is that the same as mac & cheese? Because there’s still boxes of that everywhere.”

“Jeez, I hope not,” Piper shudders. “See, they’d let brahmin milk go rotten and skim off - ”

“You know, never mind.”

“Can I help either of you?” Desdemona interrupts, arms crossed. “Since coddling our newest, unproven volunteers is apparently a much higher priority than converting this dank hole from a two-man listening post into a secure HQ?”

 _What would Nora do?_ he thinks, as Piper grabs her pencil again and opens her mouth to probably demand an interview. _Shoot ‘em or bribe ‘em_ , she’d said once, quoting her father, although he had his doubts that a pre-war plumber gunned down many opponents.

“You’ve got your work cut out for you there,” MacCready starts, imitating Nora’s “cheerfully oblivious to insults” tone. If Piper’s side-eye is any indication, he hasn’t quite caught it, but soldiers on anyway. “That mold all along the back wall can probably be scrubbed off with mutfruit vinegar, but you’ll need sealant in all the corners or it’ll creep right back. And you need timbers up there...there...over here too...and rebuild that wall over there, unless you like sleeping in a damp draft.”

That’s just to keep the ceiling up and her people from dying of spore-lung, but he decides to skip the more cosmetic possibilities in the face of Desdemona’s deepening frown, instead offering, “If you’re short on supplies, just give me a list. I can have a delivery fall off the back of a brahmin near here.”

“And I need to speak to whoever coordinates your intel,” Piper jumps in before Desdemona can reply. “My Institute information is mostly unsubstantiated rumors - which I’m hoping you can help me with - but my Brotherhood intel is straight from the source.”

“Really,” Desdemona drawls skeptically. “What could a civilian learn that’d be any use to us?”

“Well for one thing, after we bunked up on the Prydwen, our Paladin buddy gave us the nickle tour of their new base in the Common this morning,” Piper reports. "Or, wait, that's two things, right? Easy to lose track when you've got so many interesting facts in mind."

“The Common? Shit. They’re moving fast. Drummer Boy!” Desdemona calls, the color draining from her face, and the man at the board puts down his chalk and joins them.

“Hey, nice hat,” Piper offers, tapping her own, but the guy barely glances at her.

“Yeah?” he asks Desdemona instead, flipping his collar up against the draft.

“I’m assigning her to your team.”

“So I got a team now?” His lips pinch together tight at Desdemona’s stern look. “I’ll try not to go mad with power.”

“Hi, uh, Drummer Boy?” Piper tries again. “I’m - ”

“No real names,” he breaks in sharply, then rubs his chin. “Those’re the rules, and...it’s just easier that way.”

“You,” Desdemona orders, pointing at the sleeping area, underneath the largest stretch of mildew. “Wake up Tinker Tom.”

Behind him, Piper tries to turn a hard snort into a cough, and he doesn’t look at her because if he does, he’ll have to ask when they’ll meet Peter Pan and Long John Silver, and then it’ll be a long cold night on the North Church steps figuring out how to tell Nora that gunning down the entire Railroad before they got a single answer out of them was just...just unavoidable. Really.

“Given what he just slept through, you might find a dose of jet helps with that,” Desdemona sighs.

“On it, boss,” MacCready replies, defaulting to the bland attitude that kept him alive and employed through the months before Nora.

They haven’t picked up any jet since Diamond City, but there’s a Nuka Cherry in his bag that’s barely splattered with mutie blood. He crouches next to the twitching lump of blankets on the corner mattress, dangling the bottle from his good hand, and warily touches what he’s pretty sure is the man’s shoulder.

“Hey, uh, Tom?”

No answer. He tightens his grip and shakes. “Tom? Desdemona sent - ”

The blankets erupt, disgorging a wad of bloodshot eyes, filthy coveralls, and a trembling hand that smashes the cola bottle against the wall, spraying them both with fizzy syrup.

“Dammit!” MacCready sputters, flopping back on the other mattress, trying to shake out a shard of glass jammed between two fingers. _We could’ve got twenty caps for that, easy._

The other man kicks off his blankets and tackles MacCready flat to the mattress, only the give of the old springs saving his mostly healed ribs from cracking again. He squirms half onto his side and gets his good arm between them against Tom’s neck, pushing hard. Tom rears back and lets go with one hand, clawing at his toolbelt. MacCready plants a foot against the wall and tenses to kick them both over, but freezes at the prick of a switchblade underneath his jaw.

The agent at a nearby desk barely glances over at the ruckus, rolls her eyes, and returns to her work.

“Are you one of _them_?” Tinker Tom demands, leaning hard on MacCready’s chest.

“Depends...on which…’them’...you mean,” MacCready replies, breathing shallowly. If it’s Brotherhood, well, the man doesn’t need to see his tags when the logo’s plain as day next to the sharp-ass elbow drilling into his sternum. Somehow, he doubts Tom will believe he feels exactly the same about them.

“No human drinks that cherry shit,” Tom hisses.

“I’m not...a synth.”

“No, man!” Tinker Tom looks back over his shoulder and drops to a whisper. “Extraterrestrial life forms - aliens, man! They love that shit. You...were you testing _me_?”

MacCready nods enthusiastically as the switchblade eases off his jugular. “You passed.”

“Shit,” Tom scoffs, rocking back on his heels to let MacCready sit up. “You shoulda just asked Deacon. He checks me out every week.”

“Yeah, but who checks him out?” MacCready needles, rubbing the shallow cut on his neck.

_Idiot. Everyone knows aliens are little green men. They couldn't replace anyone but a midget super mutant._

“Shit,” Tom says again, more quietly. “Deacon? Naw. Or...shit, exactly - Deacon! Who else, right? Man, it’s about damn time Desdemona hired on someone else with a brain.”

MacCready grunts as Tom grabs his bad arm and hauls him to his feet, clapping on a tool-laden helmet Sturges would probably kill for. “Thanks...I think.”

“We’ll figure out what to do about - ” His eyes dart around the catacomb and he covers his mouth before continuing. “ - you know who. Not now. Not here. But soon. For right now, my friend, let me ask you a question.”

He nudges a cooler out from underneath a workbench with his toe and flips off the lid, showing MacCready the huge, hungry-looking syringe inside.

“Have you been eating the food out there?”


	7. Chapter 7

“You're really good at this. Like, disturbingly good.”

The Switchboard is a maze of identical twisting hallways, but between Deacon’s mental blueprint and my experience navigating the DoD’s Acquisitions Wing in a dry-clean-only blouse with a cup of Slocum’s Joe perched on a pile of folders, we transform them into a series of bottlenecked kill zones.

“Isn’t that why you’ve been stalking me?”

The previous cluster of Gen-1’s almost broke through our improvised barrier of piled-up desks before Deacon rolled a pulse grenade through the gap underneath, one of their blasts catching me in the shin as I scrambled back out of range. The burn isn’t deep enough to justify a stimpack, but the lucky greave I’ve worn since Concord has finally had it. I drop the shredded leather on one of the dead androids, barely resisting the impulse to make a sign of the cross over it before standing.

My fatigues are scorched all over, mostly held together now by dried blood. They’ll go in the scrap bag back in Sanctuary, rags to be sewn into blankets or just stuffed in a mattress. There’s a new bullet groove in the side of my helmet, too, which Deacon swears came from a rogue six-shooting synth in a cowboy hat and definitely _not_ his rifle.

This is a hell of a lot harder without Mac.

“Auditioning! And, yes, partially.”

He grins at me, again. I haven’t endured such a charm offensive since that asshole Redski Bob back in D.C. Even throwing Deacon in dutch with his compatriots only earned a sulk that barely lasted the walk to the river. At the first starburst painted on a wall, he brightened and explained that the X in the centre indicated danger in the area.

_Yes, the skulls on pikes tipped me off, too._

Ignoring me: _A cross in the centre is the opposite, an ally._

_Funny how the two signs are identical if you tilt your head._

And he’d laughed at that, tinny and fake, said I was the first person to get the joke in the 70 years since he set up the Railroad, and I called him a liar, but from the twitch of his fingers before he stuffed them in his pockets, it was obvious he’d picked up on the gears suddenly grinding beneath my light insult.

A cross in a starburst - I’d seen that. At Bunker Hill maybe, and definitely near a couple of the safehouses Mac and I regularly squatted in, but it wasn’t until we’d ghosted past the threat (a squad of Gen-1s patrolling around laser-scorched raider corpses) that the first time came back to me.

Back in the old days, scouting with Preston around Sanctuary Hill for any threats to the infant settlement, we’d come across a sniper's blind on the hill above Vault 111. It was a cozy set-up, thick bedroll, tarp strung overhead, tidy firepit for warmth and cooking, the perfect camp for a resourceful wastelander...and marked with that starburst cross. We'd scavenged every scrap of it for settlement supplies and kept an eye on the site, but never found a sign of the sniper's return.

Just a hunter, we decided uneasily. Perched directly over a vault the Commonwealth figured was dead and a stretch of picked over ruins patrolled by a more-psychotic-than-usual Mr. Handy...a camp two days’ raider-infested hike from any markets.

I’d pushed the memory away, concentrating on streaking through open country without attracting attention, only letting it resurface once we breached the old HQ and Deacon’s focus split between an army of Gen-1s and the remains of the friends they’d killed. He even fell silent as we passed the bodies in the escape tunnel, expression impassive as I checked them for ammo and med supplies. There’s more bite in his joking patter now that we’re past them.

“Whenever you’re done corpse-squatting, I’m ready to go.”

I reload Sparky with fusion cells and slot another narrow, streamlined laser into my pack. “Are these actually corpses, though, or salvage?”

Was that the Railroad’s blind, maybe a remote hiding spot for synths?

“You should definitely share that opinion with Glory. Ideally when she’s at the firing range.”

“You want me to kill these things?” Or was it set up specifically to monitor a vault that hadn’t made a peep in 200 years, at least until Kellogg broke in ten years ago? Had they been tracking him at the time and decided to keep a weather eye on the vault that caught his interest? There’d be no records of me two centuries after the war, and even if there were, _procurement specialist and lackadaisical housewife_ was nothing to inspire investigation. “That takes ammo, and I was running low even before we started the Railroad’s magical mystery mecha tour.”

“We could try infiltrating them in a clever disguise - did you pick up any boxes or tin foil on the walk here?”

“If there’s a sexy lady robot costume in this plan, you’re wearing it.”

“No argument here. I’ve seen your version of feminine wiles. Fortunately, the Railroad needs heavies, not a Mata Hari.”

So the Railroad - or maybe just Deacon, given Desdemona mentioned his “special projects”? - followed me because I came out of Kellogg’s vault. Or...they broke in, found all the experiments dead except one, and decided to thaw me out, scampering back to their blind to watch me stagger out in helpless horror from a safe, hilarious distance?

The thought sparks a blind rage I can barely strangle down, and Deacon pauses before changing the subject back to business. “After the next turn’s a T-intersection, hostiles likely on both sides.”

I clear my throat and try to sound natural. “Why don’t you play bait this time and draw them back to me?”

Or maybe they just figured Kellogg might return, stuck whoever was at the bottom of the Railroad totem pole that week on door-staring duty with a scoped pea-shooter, and were as shocked as me when I popped out into the world?

“Gee, sorry boss, I’d love to, but I’ve got these flat feet. They kept me out of the army, too. And I was so keen to serve my country, wipe those pinkos off the map, and try some really authentic beef with broccoli!”

“Liar.” I pop another buffout, longing for the second ultracodeine left behind with the rest of our meds. My back is plotting more elaborate revenge on me with every solidly built laser I add to my pack. “And broccoli wasn't even a Chinese vegetable.”

How would he know all of us in 111 were from before the war, even if they did break in after Kellogg?

“You’re a treasure trove of historical nuggets, you know that?”

There was that empty cryopod near Nate, the one that had me searching every corner of that vault, shivering in a slush-encrusted vault suit, first for a fellow survivor...then just hoping for a fresher corpse than all those skeletons. And it’s not like I knew everyone in Concord...

“Well, I was a History major at University Point, back when it was good ol’ Massachusetts Bay.”

Deacon fumbles reloading his hunting rifle.

“You remember.” Stretching as the drug revives my exhausted muscles, I chant the old school song. “ _Sons of ol’ Massachusetts, devoted daughters true, Baystate, ol' Baystate, we'll give our best to you_. Great pre-law program. Although if my advisor’d told me I’d be personally responsible for rebuilding the Commonwealth now, I’d have stuck out that Engineering double major. Shall we?”

I race ahead rather than creeping, emboldened by the buffout rush and Deacon’s silence. He’s right about the hostiles on both sides, and I fight alone inside their crossfire for a long minute before Deacon shoves me into the scant shelter of a hallway corner and picks off the last two synths himself. He pushes a stimpack at me.

“Back of your neck,” he points out. “Not like you even felt it through the buff-rage.”

I reach underneath the low rim of my helmet, the touch dislodging the leather necklace and what feels like half of my tied-back hair. They fall to the laser-scorched linoleum, sliced leather slapping, curls drifting behind.

“Shit,” I whisper, picking up the necklace, and am relieved to find the rings hidden inside still unmelted. “Well, ok, better my hair than my spine, but still. Shit.”

I add Deacon’s stimpack to the small stash in my pocket and unravel the necklace until I've got a piece long enough to tie the rings around my wrist, pushing them underneath the cuff of my fatigues.

Deacon watches with a carefully empty face, finally commenting, “University Point, huh? Funny. I got an education there, myself.”

“I think I remember you from the student union - you were in the peacenik clique, always nursing tiny espressos and handing out leaflets on fusion-power proliferation?”

His smile is thin. “A little before my time.”

“My mistake.” I take off my helmet and re-tie my hair, trying to feel how much is left as I pin up the loose bits. “Does this look stupid? Actually, don't answer that.”

He pushes the pompadour wig back to show his shaved scalp. “I'm the wrong guy to ask, anyway.”

He kicks a laser rifle closer to me and scouts through the two rooms, picking up holotapes and papers, adding the latter to a trashcan and lighting a match. He stares at the flame while I quickly pack away ammo and streamlined guns, only dropping it in after the papers when he catches me watching him.

“I suppose a gentleman born after the bombs is grateful when the lady has any hair at all.”

“I suppose he would be.”

No, Deacon’s not pre-war. He doesn't quote songs Travis has never played, point out street names buried under rubble, even hum the Super Duper Mart jingle. He couldn’t tell me what cheese tastes like, or ice cream, or coffee, or describe a Corvega’s scorched-coolant stink when you put their zero-to-sixty claim to the test.

Which, in fact, was strangely similar to the smell that’s dominating any room down here not filled with week-old corpses, gunpowder and laser propellant and sweat and viscera better unexamined. It’s the smell that clung to Nate’s old fatigues, even through so much detergent and starch that the creases crackled, that now mostly just means you’re still alive. After all these months out here, I’ve gotten used to it on everyone but myself. Unzipping that vault suit after three days’ hiking...whoof.

If there were another 111 survivor, and I had the time to pick out my best clothes - the faded jeans and teeshirt that actually fit his lanky frame, unlike every too-short baggy outfit he’s changed into on the trip - I wouldn’t just rinse out the bloodstains. I couldn’t face someone who’d know how much I stink, not if I had even five minutes and a puddle.

“Yeah, see, I figured we’d dance around this a lot longer.” Deacon manages a ghost of his former smirk. “I've got so many good lines prepared. It's a waste not to use them just because you came clean well ahead of the script.”

I slip down the corridor beyond one of the rooms, checking for more synths. Finding none, I set a line of mines on the linoleum behind me before closing the door and pushing a desk against it. Deacon sets the flaming trash bin in the corner farthest from the silent smoke alarm and puts his hands in his pockets, casually jingling the loose bullets inside.

“I never had much patience for mysteries. Used to skip to the last page to see if the ending was interesting enough to keep reading.” Sparky rests comfortably on my shoulder, my trigger finger wrapped innocently around the barrel. It’s an empty gesture when Deacon’s near enough to bash in his nose with the stock.

“Not a lot of open books left out here, let alone ones with all their pages.” He steps closer. “Maybe you shouldn’t set your heart on a satisfying end.”

My neck pops as I hold his gaze, automatically tilting my head, throwing back my shoulders, and shifting my weight further on my toes; a decade arguing with Nate at least taught me how to keep some dignity while arguing with a tall man. “So, you’d prefer I embrace the mystery and fight on like a good little soldier?”

“If that’s an option,” he nods, casually shifting his rifle from one shoulder to the other.

“You know it isn’t.”

He nods again and reaches into his jacket pocket, but replaces the pack of cigarettes without taking one. His hand tightens on the rifle.

Mine does the same on Sparky, and as his head tilts oh so slightly toward that motion, my other hand snaps up to snatch the sunglasses off his nose.

He rears back, lifting the rifle between us, narrowing his eyes like it’s a federal secret they’re pale blue, almost grey.

I let out a breath slowly, feeling my nostrils flare. “The eyes always give you away - dilating pupils, twitchy little muscles, even how often you blink...well, unless you’re a clinical psychopath, and don’t suffer any of that tedious, _human_ , emotional arousal.”

“Fascinating,” he growls, dropping his chin like that’ll hide the convulsive swallow before he speaks.

I fold down the earpieces and hold the glasses up between us. Deacon’s eyes flick between them and my face several times before he takes them. He moves to tuck them in his pocket with the cigarettes but can’t quite manage it, thumb rubbing the nosepiece as he hesitates.

“Put them on,” I scoff, then push my sleeve back to look at the rings. “We all have our little props.”

He flirts with defying me for a moment before setting them in place, slinging his rifle and crossing his arms. “This is fun. Hey, how ‘bout when it’s my turn to pick the game, we play a few rounds of Russian roulette, huh?”

“Sure. Normally, it wouldn’t be fair - I was on the varsity team, after all - but you don’t seem like an amateur yourself.”

He snorts at that, scrunching his nose to push the sunglasses higher. He’s sweating now, and they slide right back down, almost revealing his eyes again.

He’s not the only one. Another curl escapes its bobby pin and bellyflops down my forehead, damply tickling my eyelid. I blink and flick it back, tucking it underneath the helmet.

“I’m too tired for this. And I’m not firing another shot until I know who I’m doing it for.”

“I told you,” he starts. “When we evacuated, Carrington couldn’t - ”

“Not Carrington,” I snap and take a breath, forcing a cold smile. “You know, I’ve got a special role in the Brotherhood.”

“Yeah?” he asks, brows pinching together, shifting the shoulder his rifle hangs on.

“Yeah. Danse gives me orders, but I’m mostly out on the knight errant track. He doesn’t like it, but he knows I’m more useful out here following my nose. If I didn’t check in for a week or two, maybe even a month...he wouldn’t think anything of it.”

“Huh.” Deacon slowly uncrosses his arms, letting the rifle’s strap slip down until he catches it in one hand.

“So if some asshole, say, broke both my knees and stimmed them solid, especially if I had to either float back down an old sewer or drag myself through all those mines and synths ahead? No one would come looking for me.”

“That’s a great story.” His feet shift a little farther apart. “You should write children’s books.”

“I’m working on a series, actually. Bunch of cave-kids and their wacky adventures.You think a violent milk-cow sidekick would be too much?”

One corner of his mouth quirks up. “A brahmin, in a cave? Forget it. She’d knock over stalagmites, get stuck in tunnels, fill entire caverns with manure...it’d only lead to nutty hijinks. Children hate hijinks.”

“Well, I’ll keep workshopping it.”

And there it is again, that full-body glint those sunglasses do nothing to hide, and...hell. It’s Danse outside ArcJet, pushing Sparky into my arms so hard there’s still a bruise on my breast three days later. Or Preston kicking the brown ruin of my lawn, tired smile pushing at the ashen creases in his cheeks. Nick’s skeletal hand catching mine, squeezing, on Kellogg’s abandoned doorstep.

Before the world ended there was only ever Nate, moving our wine bottle so it blocked his view of his date instead of me, elbowing his roommate aside. _Any chance you've got more...adventurous...tastes than that shit they play on GNN?_

I never even got promoted past corporal. The world is damaged beyond repair if every other fool I meet out here wants to put me in charge of it.

Deacon pointedly sets his rifle on a desk and sits next to it. “So this theoretical asshole - and what an asshole, right, threatening execution when you’re supposed to be working together? What do you think his chances would be to actually pull it off?”

“Yeah, well, I’m still flying on Buffout Airways, and, honestly? It’s been a shit week. A vicious life-or-death struggle might hit the spot.”

“Mowing down synths isn’t satisfying the bloodlust, huh?”

“Coolant splatter isn’t the same,” I tell him flippantly, then, “And it might be the sleep deprivation talking, but they’re somewhat cute. When they crumple up with that little ‘oh…’, it’s hard to feel like a conquering hero.”

“You should definitely tell Glory that.”

“So here’s the alternative: share what you’ve got on me, how you got it, and any scrap of intel that can get me closer to Shaun, no matter how small.”

Deacon shakes his head, casually resting one hand next to his gun. “See, that's - ”

I toss Sparky onto the desk, taking spiteful satisfaction when his fingers twitch at the clatter. “And in return, I won’t lie to you.”

He bites at a hangnail and tsks at the bead of blood that raises before answering. “What’s the statute of limitations on that offer?”

“None. You won’t always get an answer, but when you do, it’ll be honest.”

“Ooh, so I’ll finally learn the truth about that dead starlet behind Vince Natalie's Hollywood bungalow?”

“You...what? Of course I don’t…” His eyebrows bob behind the frames of his sunglasses, and I think of Nate’s just-a-tiny-bit-sadistic glee, recounting horror stories from his summer job on the BlamCo factory’s Salisbury Steak line. My frown deepens. “Limited time offer, comrade. Pony up now, or...you know, I can’t actually be bothered with the thrilling life-or-death struggle right now. But I’ll walk right back out of here, and if you follow I’ll set the behemoth outside on us both.”

He shrugs and leans back on the desk, crossing his legs. “I’ll give you however long we get before those Gen-1s out there take advantage of your distraction and kill us both.”

“Fine by me. You’d better talk fast, though.”

“Deal. Ask.”

“Why’ve you been stalking me?”

“Auditioning.”

“Stalking.”

“Aud- ”

“Stop wasting my time.”

“I heard a rumor. I followed it up. That’s my job.”

“And this rumor?”

“You know the one.”

“That the Institute sent Kellogg into the vault?”

“Bingo.”

“How the hell would you hear about that? Do...do you have an agent inside?” There’s a tremble of hope in the words I can’t quite suppress.

“Kellogg was the Institute’s outside man. Every time he surfaced, the Railroad kept tabs.” Deacon scratches behind his ear, pushing the wig askew again. “He didn’t make it hard...actually, he dropped the stealth field right behind me once, smacked my ass and told me he wasn’t leaving until morning so I should feel free to go have a beer on his tab at the Rail.”

That sounds like the arrogant bastard who left a trail out of Diamond City a child could’ve followed. “So you watched 111 for the next ten years just because he broke in once?”

Deacon frowns silently until I tap the chrono on my pipboy.

“We monitored 111 now and then,” he starts, “but it wasn’t prioritised until a tourist reported a murder of Coursers in the area. Not hunting - not synths, anyway. Just wiping out all the ‘guai and raiders around old Sanctuary…they left the Mr Handy alone, though, and that robot’s been a ‘Wealth legend since before I founded Diamond City.”

“Deacon, I swear to god I’ll bounce you off every - ”

“Ok, fine. Fine! Just the facts, ma’am. So I caught up in time to catch the boys in black cracking 111, strolling in like they owned the place. They weren’t in there long, an hour at most, and then...you came out.”

It’s an avalanche of information compared to the pebbles he doled out first, and I’m pretty certain he’s burying intel I want inside it, but… “The Institute, it came after me? Like they did with Shaun?”

“Well obviously, not _exactly_ the same way. They left without you.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Not a lot does, with the Institute.”

“Why didn’t they take me too?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why didn’t they just take me or Nate when they came for Shaun, if they were going to come back?”

“I. Don’t. Know.”

For a hot ten seconds I’m entirely sure the answers will fall out of his eye sockets if I shake him hard enough, but that’s the buffout talking - that’s probably the buffout talking - and time’s wasting.

“How’d you learn about us in 111, then? About the experiment?”

“I know all Vault-Tec’s experiments,” he boasts. “Ask me anything.”

“So researching Vaults is just a hobby of yours? That passion for history?”

“...yes?”

“Yes?”

“...no. Hey, you know that 111 wasn’t the only cryo-vault?”

“I don’t care. Why’d you - ”

“We could take a road trip, you and me - go thaw them out and party like it’s 2077. One of you’s definitely got to know who killed Vince’s starlet. Or at least have a watchable copy of _Love Set Sail_.”

“I’m leaving.”

“Look, I told you - this is my job. I was working through the Kellogg dossier a couple years ago, a file no one’d touched in...not since they couldn’t crack 111. My gut said it was worth finding out.”

“And where’d you find it?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Tell me.”

“Why?”

“So I can cross-check the details to get a sense of how much of this is bullshit.”

“Ouch.” Deacon’s eyebrows bob above the frames again. “Vault-Tec headquarters.”

“There’s no Vault-Tec HQ in Boston.”

“Capital Wasteland.”

“Really. And where in D.C. was this?”

“Vernon Square.”

“Let me think...Mount Vernon Metro, that would have been...yeah.” I rub my flushed forehead, trying to dredge up booze-wobbled memories left behind in my Friendship Heights apartment. “Giant radio tower on the roof, right? Across the street from Black Aggie’s Alehouse. Yeah. Ok, that much is true, at least.”

“Did you know they designed a vault for just one man and a crate of puppets?”

“I still don’t care.”

“And then there were the Mormon nudists - ”

“Stop wasting my time.”

“Stop demanding pointless details.”

“Like why you’d be that far from the Commonwealth, or how you just happen to stumble on exactly the archive you needed?”

“Every few years I get a new face, and before anyone here sees it, I impersonate an escaped synth to make the run between here and the Capital. Make sure no one along the way’s been compromised or replaced. My southern contact pointed me toward the HQ.”

“And their name is…?”

“Hey, it’s been great getting to know each other,” Deacon exclaims. “Next, let’s trade recipes!”

“I make a killer Beef Wellington.” So compromising an agent’s identity is finally a step too far. Maybe he can be trusted, if just a little.

“Thing about those experiments, though...like you told Piper, humanity’s only a going concern today because most of them failed.”

Or not. Of course he was listening in on us. I have to remember now, every moment I’ve spent in town or a settlement is potentially compromised.

“Who’s to say 111’s Overseer didn’t tell Vault-Tec’s smoking carcass to shove it, or someone leaned on the 'defrost' button too early, or oops, those cryo-units were scheduled to be installed next Tuesday! It could have been a boring old functional vault sheltering the precious seeds of humanity’s future, just like they promised.”

“Well, at least until Kellogg broke in,” I offer coldly.

“Right,” he agrees and hurries on. “Irma’s one of ours. So’s Amari.”

“Shit,” I whisper, rubbing my forehead harder. Kellogg’s memories are dangerous enough, but that first time in Goodneighbor… And that drifter who sidled over after John introduced himself, shivving a con artist I was totally handling on my own, _Man, you look like you could use a break from all of this - you’ve got to stop by the Memory Den, like, now._ Wasn’t he wearing sunglasses?

Hell...I can’t remember. Or I don’t want to. Just like I didn’t want to remember that last day, Nate leaning on a counter of our bright clean kitchen, taking Shaun from my arms and telling me to run, just run, he’ll be right behind me, that Vault-Tec salesman’s outraged sobbing at the gate, the crackle of ice crystals around my lips as I gasped, a scarred face looming in the window of my pod.

Of course Kellogg checked with me first; what kind of mother wouldn’t be holding her infant as the bombs fell, desperate to protect him?

“Do me a favor and look surprised when Dez assigns you an escort mission to the Memory Den, ‘kay? Thanks.”

I take a deep breath, pushing the memories back. “Yes...of course. Those synths that don’t know they’re synths. And the Den’s got tech to access memories…I should’ve guessed. Especially when she literally jammed Kellogg’s memories in Nick’s head.”

Deacon examines the ceiling tile over my head. “Amari showed me the tapes.”

“The tapes.”

“They record everything,” Deacon tells me. “Every memory the pods can access.”

My mouth flaps for a moment before I can form the words. “Without our awareness, let alone consent? Do you have _any_ idea how many laws that...that doesn’t break but utterly shatter?”

“Oh, exactly zero?”

“Let alone basic human decency!”

“Which is in abundant supply!” He grimaces and lowers his voice. “At first they only implanted volunteers’ memories, which I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear all came from Railroad agents. No? Or maybe how almost all of them boomeranged back to us as recruits? Staff meetings are tense enough with only one Carrington. We once lost an entire cell to a five-way dispute over Granny Ham’s heirloom six-shooter.”

“So,” I take another deep breath, trying to settle the heartbeat hammering in my throat. “So some synth’s walking around right now, grieving for Nate? Plotting to crack the Institute? Or maybe more than one - will I have to get in line, show off my stretch marks to prove I’ve got dibs on the rescue mission?”

“No, absolutely not.” He winces. “Or...probably not. Sort of.”

“Sort of?” My voice drops low and I don’t know if I’m more angry at Deacon or Irma or that damn synth out there loving Nate and Shaun like they’re hers to hold, even only in her mind.

“Obviously it’s not exactly your memory. Just the, the flavor of it.”

“The _flavor_ of - ”

We both jump as the first frag mine blows, instinctively scrambling away from the door. I shake my head and yank Boomer from my pack, ordering Deacon to: “Clear the door!”

“Got it, boss.” He throws his back into it, shoving the heavy desk just far enough for the door to open partway and dashes back to cover as I crouch against the wall, checking Boomer’s got a full magazine.

_/Step forward and surrender./_

_/You cannot escape. Further resistance is futile./_

_/Utilizing stealth capabilities. Fascinating./_

_/Accessing entrance interface./_

The doorknob rotates. I take a deep breath as the door slowly swings open, thumping on the desk once it’s just wide enough to allow a single synth through.

_/Scanning...life forms detected. Extermination commencing./_

Ferals and synths are best taken out the same way, legs first, with the key difference that the ferals likely to explode all over you at least have the courtesy to glow. The first three skeletal synths to barrel past lose their knees in a shower of lead and sparks, clattering to the floor. I turn my attention to the rest of the patrol behind them, knowing Mac will finish them off with a clean…

Shit.

Coach was right. Buffout really does make you stupid.

I turn back in time to catch a laser cutting through the last synth’s neck, which means that bastard is touching Sparky and will pay with his hand, except he’s likely just saved me at least a nasty injury, so...maybe just a finger. He steps out of cover to finish off the fourth with a crunching blow from Sparky’s stock, and I snatch it out of his hands.

“Use your own damn rifle, caveman.”

“You’re welcome, think nothing of it!”

I creep toward the door to look for the last one or two that’s got to be out there, wishing we had a grenade left. There’s a faint scrape down the hallway, and I cautiously poke my head out just in time to catch a synth helmet duck behind the opposite corner.

“Well, that one’s smarter than he should be,” Deacon whispers, close enough for his breath to puff against my ear, and I flinch away.

I raise Sparky as a tiny sliver of helmet crests again, holding my breath until the vulnerable scanner-eye appears, and shoot. The head explodes and I throw myself backwards, knocking Deacon to the floor. I’m faster, scrambling to my feet and kicking the rifle out of his reach.

He raises his hands, slowly, both of us frozen for the seconds it takes for our ears to stop ringing, to be sure the silence in the hallway beyond isn’t just that we’ve gone deaf.

“So...are you going to point that at me?” He jerks his chin toward Sparky as I settle it and Boomer over opposite shoulders. “Right now, it feels like I’m the only one trying to give this standoff scenario any legs.”

I leave him to check the hallway and scavenge the wreckages, squatting until a cramp blooms and spirals around the base of my spine. There’s a row of office doors after the turn and I’ll check them all, wrench guns or booze or drugs from the grasp of gawping skeletons and root through the drawers for whatever scraps of my old world there’s room for in my bag. In a minute. I’ll do it in a minute.

“This is a terrible spot for a nap,” Deacon warns, sitting down across the hall from me.

He kicks my foot when I ignore him, instead digging in my bag to find the coffee mug taken off a desk three skirmishes back. The decal’s cracked and faded and I only know it’s a happy donut holding a steaming mug aloft because there were two identical ones in our cupboard, and Codsworth somehow always knew which was Nate’s and which was mine.

“Hey,” he tries again. “Uh...you.”

“The name’s - ”

“We don’t use real names.”

“Of course you don’t.”

“And you don’t have a code name yet, not until you’re in HQ. Legitimately in HQ. It’ll probably be ‘Wanderer’ when - ”

“No,” I insist sharply. “It won’t be. Once I’ve got Shaun, we’re settling down wherever the Institute can’t reach us and never setting foot outside the walls. That’s the life I was supposed to have, not this, this… Why don’t you dump that name on that synth with my mind - surely you can make her be whatever you want.”

“There’s no synth version of you,” Deacon sighs and rests his head back against the wall, rolling it from side to side until his neck cracks. “Amari only has that one memory on record, and traumatic experiences are...complicated. Amari can...can sort of ‘fuzz’ them, and the mind will fill in people and places from other memories already implanted that fit the emotions. So no, there’s no one with all of your memories, or even that memory exactly. Maybe, probably, she remembers losing her family in retribution for some betrayal, or defending a settlement, or even just a senseless robbery. Do you get me?”

“Not in the slightest!” I hiss, my hand tightening on the mug. “Why would you put that...that _hell_ in some poor synth’s head?”

“So she’ll find a caravan job that’ll take her anywhere but here. She’ll keep running from that pain until she’s so far from the Commonwealth that the Institute will never recover her.”

“That’s horrible.”

“That’s practical. And you know if anyone does, how motivating that kind of pain can be. Maybe she’ll find a cause and - ”

“I don’t have a goddamn cause except finding my son,” I snarl. “And then maybe track down every asshole who held me back even a moment and stake them all out in the Glowing Sea slathered in barbecue sauce.”

“You sure keep a lot of torture scenarios in your back pocket. That’s definitely a quality you want in an unsupervised travelling companion.”

“Maybe you should keep that in mind, next time you’re lurking around Heavily Armed Lovers’ Lane.”

“Trust me, witnessing that amateur performance is torture enough.” He winces as I jam the mug back in my bag, chipping the handle on a laser sight. “That’s a lie. You think there’s any useful intel in two people fucking? Tab A, slot B, yeah, we’ve filled the dossier on that already. I did rent the room next to you at the Rex once, though. Never again. Put in a noise complaint, for all the good that did.”

“Oh, that’s fine then. Your gross violations of privacy are limited to the kind of unaware sad sacks who’d frequent the Memory Den. I’m completely ok with all this.”

He points a finger at me, popping his lips in a tired approximation of a gunshot.

“You’re not exactly making friends here.”

“That’s not exactly my goal here.”

“The Railroad, I mean. It’s rather obvious friendship isn’t in your personal wheelhouse.”

“We’re the last and only line of defense between the Institute and the entire damn world? We’re the best, noblest organization that’s ever lived. We’re not just saving synths, we’re building a better, brighter Commonwealth!” He spreads his arms, fingers stretched wide, like a carnival huckster.

“The hell you are. That’s me, with every scrap of copper wire and glass I drag back to my three Rumplestiltskins in the Rocket.”

Why am I smiling at him?

He snorts and cracks his knuckles. “What the hell is a Rumpelstiltskin?”

“Old fairy tale.” A warning on the dangers of bullshitting, if I recall correctly. “It wouldn’t surprise me if Mac knows.”

“It’d surprise the hell out of me if he knew which end of a deathclaw to pet if it had a bell - ” He breaks off, holding his hands up in surrender before I get a word out. “Look, I could spoon-feed you our own patented form of bullshit, same as Woody and Buzz.”

“Woody and…?”

“That kids show, the cowboy and the spaceman?”

“I’m drawing a blank.”

“There was a talking tato as well, I think.”

His thousand-watt smile fades when I chuckle and rub my eyes. “Yeah, still nothing.”

“Maybe I dreamed it.”

My reluctant laughter dissolves into a sigh. “You mean Preston and Danse. Their dreams are all bullshit, eh?”

“I’m just saying, look at what they do. What _you_ do, when you’re with them. What world you’re building for them, and how they’ll pay for it. At the end of the day, you’ll need to make a choice.”

“And you think the Railroad should be it?”

He shakes his head. “I think you’ll know the right choice when you have to make it. Although…the Railroad could use more people who get really, really angry at following the least evil path.”

I snort to myself at that, but let it pass. There's no getting through to hero-worshipers.

“Diamond City,” I start.

“I don’t have anything for you,” he replies quickly and stands, stripping off his rough-woven settler’s shirt.

“You impersonated a guard there. Good choice of disguise, by the way. It’d get you in pretty much anywhere, so long as none of the real guards got a good look at you.”

“You had until the Gen-1s broke in,” he tells me, hopping on one leg as he strips his trousers past his boots with enviable ease. “It’s your turn to be honest.”

Like a matinee idol, he’s older than his face. There’s wrinkles above his knees and elbows, scars faded to pale puckers across his chest, and the muscles moving under his freckled skin have a ropy, worn-in texture. It reminds me of Kellogg - of Nick’s reluctant sigh, asking for my combat knife, _Well...we’d better check if he’s a synth, at least_ \- and likewise, I probably wouldn’t stand a chance against Deacon in a real close-quarters struggle, either.

All of which I noticed the first time he suddenly stripped down as we rested in the old Letchmere Station underpass, changing his clean-ish clothes for an outfit that’d seen better and much bloodier days. And again in the Red Rocket outside Lexington, into farmer’s clothing, complete with brahmin whiff. I’m starting to wonder if he’s on the compulsive end of the psychastheniac spectrum but, as it turns out, once you’ve twice let a man’s nakedness pass without comment, it’s too socially awkward to bring it up the third.

“Kellogg was badly injured, after he left Diamond City,” I tell him as he shakes out a pair of pleated slacks. “And in receipt of a terrible severance package from his employers. He planned to die, and I still walked away with more stim-serum than blood in my veins. Not entirely sure Nick got all the slugs out, either; there’s a .44-calibre rattle in my hip when I run.”

“My version’s better,” he says, muffled by the shirt collar, buttoned and windsor-knotted tight, before yanking it past his nose. “Save the honesty for me, and I’ll handle Dez. She won’t admit it, but she prefers a little razzle dazzle.”

“Your turn. Kellogg, he was in Diamond City with - ”

“I was following you. Another agent took Kellogg duty.” He adds a torn sports jacket to the ensemble and shoots the cuffs, spinning in a slow circle. “And we’re not taking turns. Truth or dare time’s over.”

“Brown’s not your color,” I judge. “Does nothing for your eyes.”

“Cute.” He pushes the glasses higher on his nose.

“You were in Diamond City when I arrived.” It’s a guess, but a safe one. Deacon puts his hands in his pockets. “Kellogg didn’t scarper until I came back with Nick. You were in town at the same time as Shaun.”

So was I. If I’d only known...

“I never saw Shaun,” he insists. “And get up, we need to move.”

I stretch out my legs, propping them up on my bag, and look back the way we came. It’s not a threat; none of the threats worked anyway, neither violence nor abandonment. Deacon came to the table expecting to lose those chips. He could’ve stopped his confession at the Vault-Tec HQ but gave up Amari and Irma, too, and the Memory Den, and this is my game he’s playing, isn’t it?

“Up and at ‘em,” he blares, swinging his pack on over his young-executive costume. He kicks my foot again, trying, “Hoo rah?”

“You’re good,” I admit. “Better than me. That was probably even all the truth - but not _all_ the truth - and you kept me too blind pissed to catch the gaps. Well played, sir.”

I doff my helmet, letting it clonk back hard to my skull.

“And yet you’re still sitting there,” he observes after a pause.

“Partly because I don’t want to admit you won,” I tell him, then concede with an embarrassed grimace. “Mostly because my back’s frozen up again, and I can’t stand up on my own.”

He only stares at the hand I hold up, even when I flap my fingers impatiently.

“Fine. But I really will shoot out your knees if you laugh.”

I roll away from the wall onto my hands and knees, carefully planting one foot on the floor and grabbing the nearest doorknob for leverage.

“I did see that kid once. Out in the market with Kellogg.”

I freeze, trying to crane my neck up high enough to catch his expression. He walks a few steps down the corridor, poking his head through one of the doors.

“Kellogg kept him out of school - told Zwicky the boy’d had a fever that left him simple. No one questioned it, not when he asked things like, what plant does meat grow on? Why does the sky change color? How do bullets move? And Kellogg just laughed and puffed those cigars and answered every one.”

“He was kind?” I haul myself up along the wall and limp after Deacon.

“The Great Green Jewel’s father of the year, far as Miss Edna was concerned.”

“Thank god.” It comes out as a gut-punched whisper.

“Thank what?” Deacon asks, turning back to me with an exasperated frown.

“They’re taking care of him.” He’s not in a cell, laid out on a cold steel table...pieced out among jars and slides. “Shaun’s not just a guinea pig to them. He wouldn’t have been so, so open with Kellogg if he didn’t expect to be treated kindly.”

“Well, Kellogg took care of him...that doesn’t mean - ” Deacon pauses to fiddle with his cuffs again. “Look, the Institute isn’t kindergarten. It doesn’t kidnap people just to return them home with a backpack full of finger paintings. How do you know that’s even your son?”

“I know. There’s no doubt in my mind - he looks just like me.”

“The Institute could’ve sent Kellogg one of their own kids. Brown hair and eyes isn’t exactly a rare combination.”

“Kellogg believed it was Shaun. He didn’t just tell me - it was in his memories.”

“Are you sure you’re not…” He sighs and ducks into the next office, calling back, “Keep an open mind. That’s all I’m asking.”

“I guess I can promise that.”

“You got any use for this?”

Something soft strikes my face and I scrape my knuckles on the doorway batting it down. “What the…”

Jangles the Moon Monkey bounces off my foot with the enervated jingle of rusty bells. The leering grin that peeks through its dusty faceplate makes me shudder, same as it did two centuries ago. “Maybe one of the boys will like it.”

“You really think so?” Deacon asks doubtfully. “I meant the fiberglass inside - are you telling me there’s ever been a kid twisted enough to actually play with this thing?”

“God, no.” Its arms fit neatly in two of the smaller straps of my bag, Jangles’ empty stare surveying our backtrail. “We used them to teach our children the true face of fear. Fighting the Commies was a breeze after staring down one of these at the end of your bed every night.”

He coughs into his sleeve and turns away. "Big open office coming up. They'll have the bulk of their forces in place to hold it. You ready?"

“Lay on, MacDuff,” I tell him, stretching my shoulders and taking the door he holds open.

"And damned be him that cries enough," Deacon finishes cheerfully, then pauses to show me a comically deep frown. "Wait, you were mis-quoting that, right? I'm not going to get a sword in my neck?"

"Embrace the mystery, buddy," I smile back and push him on toward the next fray.


	8. Chapter 8

Piper shakes him out of a dream, the old one where he's guarding Murder Pass and has a bead on the lead invader, already pulling the trigger when he realises it's a kid in his scope and the heavy tread of mutie feet is actually in the cavern behind him…

“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty. He’s back.”

MacCready rolls on his side, not quite evading the sledgehammer that glances down his left side...except, no, that’s just the familiar sensation of mostly healed bones and muscles stuttering to life, unfiltered by med-x. At least it used to be familiar; Nora’s always been generous with painkillers, even when he was just her extra gun.

Piper catches his arm. “Need a hand up?”

“Just a minute.” He sits on the edge of the mattress, stretching carefully and listening to the pain pinging down from his head, through neck-arm-back-leg, and judges that it’s all well on the mend, aside from the weakness in his wrist and hand. It hasn’t improved a bit since Carrington’s last shot, and that worries him.

Piper leans close even after he waves her off, her hand hovering over his shoulder as his fingers move barely half as far as he expects them to. He follows her gaze to Deacon – and only Deacon – screeching at Desdemona.

“...then she patched me up, threw me over her shoulder, and blasted her way through the rest of the complex. Synths everywhere!”

“Where’s Nora?”

“I don’t see her.” Piper takes the pencil stub from behind her ear, tucks it back. “You don’t think…”

He reaches for his rifle, remembers that it’s in his bag, in pieces. Dammit.

Darn it.

“Is this why you ditched me back in Bunker Hill?”

Nora’s stuffed bag rolls into the HQ, followed by the woman herself, another pack on her shoulders. He sits back on the mattress, taking a deep breath, as she stoops to pick up her bag in both arms.

“Hope you didn’t have plans for any of this. No carry, no share-y.”

Of course she’s back.

“It’s not my fault! I had to leave it behind when the biggest gang of raiders I’ve ever seen stole your new mug.” Deacon spreads his hands like he’s showing how big a fish he hooked. “There was a daring rooftop chase, then a dash across the river, leaping from boat to – ”

“Uh huh. You owe me 25 caps for the nuka and fancy lads you ran off with. And another Slocum’s Joe mug, it sounds like.” She shoulders Deacon out of the way with her bag and more carefully passes Desdemona, ticking a finger off her helmet in a half-assed salute. “God, I needed that sugar.”

Desdemona returns the gesture with pointed crispness and a raised eyebrow. “Deacon tells me you single-handedly secured Carrington’s prototype, disabled a minefield, and wiped out a hundred Gen 1s. Is any of that true?”

“You know him better than me – what do you think?” Nora rests against a crumbling pillar, eyes flitting from agent to agent until she finds MacCready. Her uniform’s more burns than fabric and one greave’s missing but she seems ok, aside from shifting the stuffed bag like her back’s still killing her. Looks like Deacon was even more of a load than he expected, but she was up to carrying it.

Like he ever doubted her.

He catches her scanning him in return and stands up on the bad leg, waves with his healing arm, manages not to wince. The performance must pass muster as her tight expression sags a little, lips softening, at least until Deacon pushes between them.

“Yeah, about that, maybe we could make a deal? Say – ”

And the line between her eyebrows is immediately back, deeper than before.

“Nope. No new deals. Caps or I’m selling all your clothes and back issues of Picket Fences.”

“I’ll take those magazines off your hands,” Piper volunteers. “Pay you back in Diamond City?”

“You got it, Red.” Nora drops the second bag and roots around inside, yanking out two wigs and a lab coat, then pauses to hold a slippery red dress up to her torso. “Actually, I might keep this.”

“Forget it. You don’t have the legs to pull that off.” Deacon stuffs the clothing back inside his bag and kicks it under a nearby shelf. “I’ll owe you.”

“If you two are finished,” Desdemona starts.

“Never!” Deacon declares, overlapping with Nora’s sardonic, “If only.”

“Then maybe one of you could make something resembling a genuine report?”

“You don’t mean that.” Deacon steps around Desdemona to follow as Nora heads toward the other side of the catacomb.

Nora ignores him, calling back over her shoulder to Desdemona: “The Switchboard’s clear. Territory outside’s still a mess, though. When we left, that behemoth was having it out with a squad of Gunners. Who will likely move in, if you don’t re-take the facility underneath.”

“No.” Desdemona shakes her head. “It’s compromised. Let the Gunners have it.”

“That’s…less than ideal for me.” Nora takes a bulky stealth boy out of her bag. “Hey Carrington, got your prototype! Any chance you want to buy a bag of mines and laser pistols, too, so I don’t have the haul all this crap to Goodneighbor?”

Glory whistles. “I could take those mines off you, if Tom doesn’t need them.”

“Got any fusion to trade? Cores or cells, I’ll give either a good home.”

Deacon steps close again, quoting, “’If only’ – hah! Admit it, we’re a great team.”

“Define ‘great’. And ‘team’.” Nora watches Carrington check the stealth boy’s casing for damage, rubbing a burn on her chin. He grimaces at a long crack in one corner.

“Deacon…” Desdemona begins again, a warning edge in her voice.

Piper leans close to MacCready and whispers. “You got a crowbar? We’re gonna need one to get her out of here without Deacon wonderglued to her hip.”

“We breaking his knees or his skull?” He scowls, wishing the man’d shut up and let Nora finish off her reports. It’s almost a physical itch, the need to make sure she’s ok, but unlike some jagoffs, he won’t undermine her like that in front of new allies.

“C’mon, be honest – we made a deal! I answered all your irrelevant questions, and you can’t even stick to the whole truth and nothing but for a measly day? What a ripoff.”

“You steal my breakfast, and I’m the ripoff artist here? Okay.”

“Deal?” Desdemona asks, a glint of amusement in her narrow eyes. “Did you get Deacon to agree to some kind of…truth pact? That’d be more impressive than fighting through a hundred Gen-1s.”

“For a whole ten minutes,” Nora confirms.

MacCready wonders if there’s a second contract now folded up in the bottom of her bag with theirs, an image that makes his molars grind together.

“Care to share your secret?” Desdemona asks. “From here, it looks like he’s still got all his fingers.”

Deacon hides his fists in his cuffs. “Right, Dez, totally unrelated to the topic at hand: how ‘bout we change my code name to ‘Stumps’?”

“Blackmailed him with incriminating photographs,” Nora replies wearily. “I mean, they were of me, but you’d be amazed what a man’d trade to not see _that_ twice.”

MacCready clears his throat, too loudly, carefully not looking at Piper’s startled, then sly smile.

“No,” he tells her firmly before she can open her mouth.

She smirks back, then points her chin at Carrington. “He’s less grim than usual.”

The doctor blinks in and out of sight as he flicks the switch on his prototype. MacCready swallows hard and looks away as the rippling transitions make his touchy stomach clench up. Finally satisfied, Carrington squeezes Nora’s shoulder and beckons for her to follow him back to his lab space. Which, MacCready thinks, will be significantly less likely to collapse on his head now that he and Tom’ve had an informative chat on square-set timbering.

Valentine was right about these kooks. He and Piper worked the HQ without being too obvious about it and compared notes before turning in, dividing the crew into tragic cases, social misfits, and a couple of thrill junkies. None of them are planning on living long enough to care if the roof falls in on them. And that’s not good for their plans, because Nora can be good with details – heck, she personally mapped out every inch of the bathhouse pipes with the sanitation committee – but more often expects the groups she exploi…works with will handle the fine points on their own, after she’s sidled out the back gate.

Deacon takes the stealth boy from Carrington’s table and pushes it at Nora. “Here, try it. You should at least get to play with our new toy, after all we went through to bring it home.”

“Could you be…elsewhere?” She points a smile with too many teeth at Deacon and turns back to Carrington, nodding as he jabs at her pip-boy screen.

“Sure, but why would I want to?”

“Deacon.” Desdemona lights a cigarette and holds another one out like a settler trying to lure a mongrel puppy closer with a scrap of radrat bacon. Deacon shuffles over to her improvised command center, settling where he can keep a hairy eyeball on Nora.

Tinker Tom cracks open a can of pork’n’beans and sets it on his hot plate, propping a skillet over the bunsen burner next to it. “You guys like beans? ‘Course you do. Everyone likes beans. How ‘bout rat?”

“Sure. Guess it’s lunchtime?” His old knack for telling time underground has faded over the years, but it feels like he's somehow slept through the whole morning.

“Usually is.” Tom unspools a newspaper-wrapped clump of molerat chunks into the skillet. “Gonna have to eat up fast. Looks like Carrington’s sending you out ay-sap.”

“Looks like,” MacCready agrees, watching Nora nod at Carrington, rubbing her eyes, watching Deacon watch _that_ with a calculating crimp in his perpetual smile. He shifts his attention to his pack before Deacon can catch that he’s let the mask slip and finds the last of the Abernathy produce, a handful of squishy tatos. “Want these?”

“Sure, man, we’re not fancy.”

He hacks them to pieces with a switchblade, the fruit wobbling in his weak hand, and drops them in the pan with the meat. Tom pushes it all around with a bent spoon, and the smell that sizzles up isn’t half bad even on a stim-weakened belly. He turns away and watches Glory pile up mines from Nora’s bag, the tough agent’s grin widening as the tower grows tall and wobbly, tilting his head to catch Deacon and Desdemona’s quiet conversation.

“I was expecting you’d need Glory, probably a full team, to go in after that. But just the two of you cleared it?”

“We did, and damn fast. You’d be insane not to move her up, Dez. In fact, fair warning – if you don’t, I’ll poach her and set up on our own across the street. Call ourselves the Metro, Beantown’s modern, speedy, one-stop-liberation-shop! The Railroad’ll go bankrupt in a week.”

Desdemona blows smoke out of both nostrils, with a brief eyeroll toward the ceiling that’s probably her version of a belly laugh. “You’ve certainly never lied about anyone so highly before.”

“She’s worth it.”

There’s no sarcasm in his voice, for once. He’s sincere as Danse, and MacCready doesn’t like it. And he’s less happier than he’d expect that Deacon’s suddenly not dropping pre-war hints. What did Nora tell him, to make him quit it?

Piper elbows him, thumps a hand on her chest like a heartbeat, blows kisses at the ceiling, and laughs when he only glares at her.

“Relax,” she whispers. “Blue’s got better taste than that. Okay, not _much_ better, but…”

She clears her throat and pins her attention on Tom’s cooking, avoiding Deacon’s gaze. MacCready stares back at him without a word or a twitch – one of Nora’s tricks that he seems to’ve suddenly got the hang of – until Deacon’s the one who turns back to Desdemona, dropping his voice to a whisper.

“Just let me handle her. We’ve got too much to lose if – ”

“Hey.”

He jumps at the soft greeting just behind his shoulder, missing Desdemona’s reply. Nora smiles a little as she presses past, but without her usual smug mischief at sneaking up on him, holding out a heavy leather bundle that drips greenish blood. “You’re Tom, right? I killed a hound out front. Carrington says you’re the fellow who clears the food supply?”

“That and everything else,” Tom replies tartly, dropping the irregular cuts into a bucket of murky liquid. Bubbles rise and sizzle as they break the greasy surface.

Nora sucks on her teeth for a long moment before asking: “Marinade?”

“Something like that.” MacCready moves in to take a better look at her. Two healing burns on her neck and chin look like the worst of it, if you ignore the bruise-dark shadows under her eyes. Which are holding his, he notices, not glancing and slipping past the way they have been since the Prydwen – and, okay, so they’re not adoring so much as glowering, but it’s a definite improvement.

“Something like the reason Carrington just demanded one of my laser pistols in payment for patching you up again?”

“He gets…testy…when you inject battery acid into an arm he just fixed.” He pushes his luck, dropping his chin not quite far enough to hide a wolfish smirk. It's a move that nearly always earns an eye roll, and – not that he's keeping track or anything – at least even odds of getting laid in the very near future.

“Only a little battery acid,” Tom mutters, dumping beans into the skillet, bare fingers wrapped around the hot can.

“On the plus, I’m definitely nanobot-free,” MacCready tells Nora, who rolls her eyes and pushes his sleeve up to check the damage.

He ducks and slides the arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. She makes a disgusted squeak in the back of her throat and grumbles that she’s an armpit on two legs, but doesn’t pull away.

“Missed you out there,” she murmurs instead, closing her eyes and resting her temple against his, her helmet pushing his hat askew.

“’Course you did.” He squeezes her tighter and whispers, “Learn anything useful?”

“Traded some intel. Can go into it later.” Her hand finds his, tightens painfully. “Shaun, they…he might be okay.”

“Okay?” he starts, but she only shakes her head, opens her eyes, and looks for Piper.

“You okay?”

“Having a blast,” Piper replies sardonically. “Found a University Point survivor, and…I was right. It was the Institute – from the description, your old buddy Kellogg. Wiped out an entire settlement just because she stumbled on some old technical data they wanted.”

“Damn,” Nora breathes, the tentative hope in her face crumbling again. “Just when you think you can’t hear worse about them…”

“Yeah, welcome to the Commonwealth, Blue.”

He squeezes her hand again, presses his cheek into hers when that doesn’t get her attention. “Hey, it doesn’t change whatever you heard about Shaun. Right?”

Tinker Tom glances at them and tsks. “Don’t let Dez catch you.”

“Catch us?” Nora echoes.

“Oh, you’ll get the lecture, too.” Piper shorts derisively and makes quotation marks next to her ears. “’Fraternisation Comma None Of That’.”

“Apparently, it’s very bad for morale.” MacCready tells her.

“Really.” Nora drags the word out to four syllables.

“Because a bunch of kids just barely escaping extermination on a daily basis aren’t getting off with each other whenever Mom’s not around to ground them,” Piper laughs.

Nora drops to sit cross-legged on the mattress. “Thanks, Pipes – I really needed the image of a sneaky Railroad orgy infecting my head.”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” Tom grumbles. “You guys weren’t around when Glory and Alex broke up. How d’ya think we lost the HQ before Switchboard?”

Nora tugs on MacCready’s hand until he sits next to her, settling against his shoulder.

“Fraternising…” he warns teasingly. He wonders if the Brotherhood’s got the same policy, if that’s part of what had her in trouble with Maxson, but dismisses the worry immediately. Heck, as much as they hate recruiting outside their gene pool, fraternisation is probably mandatory. Those power suits and plasma rifles aren’t going to patrol by themselves.

“And how,” she sighs, rolling her head until her neck pops.

“You gonna get some sleep before we head out?” He knows she won’t.

“Nah. An hour’s nap won’t help, just make me cranky.” An hour’s nap would make him an hour less tired, but he decides to file it in the bulging folder marked “Nora Logic” and drop the subject. After a moment, she nudges his shoulder until he puts his arm around her again, then flips her bag open. “I brought presents.”

“About time.” A weight that’s got nothing to do with the broken ribs ebbs out of his chest.

“Scavved that old Slocum’s Joe.” She rolls the edges of her bag down to reveal a coffee tin. “Finally found one of these still sealed. You can smell it a little through the lid.”

“Coffee?” he asks and leans over to sniff, grateful for the distraction. But for something she's moped after like a junkie trying to score in Megaton, it mostly just smells like the dirt around an old firepit, snuffed-out coals and the ghost of burnt meals past. “Okay.”

“I guess you have to grow up with it,” she shrugs, not quite hiding her disappointment, and trades it for a worn baseball. “Per Carrington’s orders.”

He gives it a few experimental squeezes with his weak hand. “You starting a softball team?”

“Forget softball – I’m bringing the National League back,” she rallies, a corner of her mouth quirking up. “See if the Bambino’s curse could survive a nuclear blast. You think Danse or Preston will be first in line to sign up?”

“Marcy would trip ‘em both to get first crack at the pitcher’s mound.”

He tosses the ball between his hands, and she makes a grab but only manages to knock it toward the hotplate. He lunges and just barely snatches it away before it lands in the stew.

She barks out a laugh, mouthing _sorry!_ when Tom brandishes the bent spoon at her. “Before we start tryouts, though, I know some physio exercises that might speed up your recovery. Give you a fighting shot at right field, at least.”

“Physio?” he asks.

“It’s…uh…old vault thing. Never mind.” She rubs her eyes again.

“I’m feeling better anyway, nearly healed,” he lies, but from her sidelong glance he knows she’s not buying it.

“Uh huh. So look, I made a new friend, too,” she says with such avid glee that he glances over at Deacon and Desdemona, but grins when she only takes another gun from her bag. “His name’s apparently ‘Deliverer’.”

Feeling eyes on his back, Deacon looks over at them. At Nora, anyway.

“Terrible name.” Nice sidearm, though, almost weightless in his hand after Shooty’s relative bulk. He checks the chamber before trying the feather-light trigger, pleased with the smooth draw. “Especially since it’s clearly a she.”

She shakes her head. “It's yours if you want it, either way.”

“Yeah,” he agrees immediately, even though it doesn’t suit him. It’s for someone who sneaks up close and makes decisions fast, inches away from all the other gun barrels. It’s her – her now, who’s moved closer and closer to the action with him covering her back – and the thought of carrying that on his hip is…nice.

“There’s hardly any recoil,” she tells him, pleased. “So while you heal up, you could take him – ”

“Her.”

“ – her, then, and maybe my combat knife for backup, and we can trade places for a while, you up close with me backing you up? I know you’re kind of wasted on anything without a scope, but – ”

“No, it’s fine. Great, actually. You’ve had all the fun for too long.” He stops babbling before he’s actually kissing her boots for not leaving him behind until he’s back in sniping shape.

“Good,” she replies with a soft smile, like she heard the rest anyway.

“So you’ve met Tom, and that’s Boxer over there,” he begins, taking her hand and pointing across the catacomb. When the nearby agents automatically glance at Boxer he makes the “all clear” sign against her palm, shrugging a little when she looks up to add “as far as I know”. Her return “acknowledged” turns into a stroke along his wrist. He smiles a little as he introduces the rest of the agents drawing closer to the smell of lunch, screwing up two of the names and not caring at all. “There’s P.A.M., too – doesn’t quite have KL-E-0’s warmth, but you’d probably get along. And you know Glory, but you should definitely get to know her better.”

Piper leans closer and whispers, “She’s an escaped synth!”

“Huh,” Nora grunts, as if she’s not half-breaking his fingers.

“And as long as we’re handing in our homework…” Piper pulls a sheet of paper from her notebook and hands it to her. MacCready tries to be subtle about wiggling some blood back into his fingers.

“Here’s what I worked out with Drummer Boy on the Brotherhood incursion problem…or, as you two’d call it, Our Glorious Progress Among the Heathens. Hope you can read the map – we’ve worked out all the key points where there’s no easy detours.”

Nora flicks on her pipboy map and compares the two. “I’m guessing this is Bunker Hill?”

“Yep, and that’s Goodneighbor – ”

“And this?”

“The old convention center.”

“But that’s just rubble, isn’t it?”

“The parking bay underneath is intact.” Drummer Boy leans over her shoulder and points to a spot just northwest of the dot. “You can reach it from a utility tunnel here, past the mirelurk nest. There’s a drop box inside I need you to check.”

“Great, I’ll get right on that,” Nora replies, tracing lines on her pipboy map. “This is actually useful, Pipes.”

“And here you thought I’d be a load,” Piper preens. Drummer Boy looks twice at her thousand-watt beam.

“No, no, no, you were going to carry the load, as my pack brahmin,” Nora tells her, frowning thoughtfully at the map.

“I’ve got a supplies list to add to the provisioners’ roster between Greygarden and Nordhagen,” MacCready adds. “Heavy building stuff to get this place together.”

“You’ve both been busy.”

“Maybe we can work out a drop with Daisy…”

He trails off when Nora interrupts softly: “So, lying to Danse would be easiest, except he’ll probably storm in on his own to take out the imaginary threat…or Maxson…except I don’t exactly have leverage there…”

“Danse will definitely believe anything you tell him,” MacCready picks up the thread. “Just give him any halfway plausible excuse.”

“Hmm?” Nora blinks and takes a deep breath. “Sorry. Thinking out loud. You said something about Daisy?”

“It can wait.” Her eyes take another long moment to really focus on him. “You sure about going out without a break?”

“I’ve got this.” Nora snaps the map screen off and stretches. “So, Piper, you ready to take on more raiders?”

“Sure, just let me at them…and have a bag ready to gather up all the little bits they leave of me,” Piper laughs.

“You held your own pretty well against all those mutants and ferals yesterday.”

“I had a good trainer.”

Piper smiles at MacCready until he realises, “Oh, that was me? Uh, anytime. Happy to show you…whatever we didn’t already cover.”

He has no idea why that makes both of them laugh.

“I’ll keep that in mind. And thanks for the offer, Blue, but I’ve got to get these articles to the presses. Talk about publish or perish, right?”

Nora snorts through a yawn. “Need an escort back?”

Piper hooks a thumb at Drummer Boy. “Got one.”

“Ah.” Nora gives him a look so deadpan she may as well tweak his nose. “How kind of you.”

Drummer Boy crosses his arms. “I got dead-drops to secure.”

“Sure. That’s a thing.”

“Any chance you can actually keep my network lines fascist-free?”

“Maybe.” Nora thinks and shrugs. “Probably. Give me a little time to work something out. Might be able to claim all that as Minuteman territory, if we can find anyone desperate enough to settle, say, Hangman’s Alley? There’s an intact water line underneath they could tap into, at least, maybe survive as a provisioner waystation? Ugh. It’ll be a hard sell, but…no shortage of desperate people out here, I guess.”

“Sure. Take your time. Not like we got people dying every day out here. Or, oh wait…”

“So the Minutemen are happy to work with synths?” Desdemona asks, cutting between Piper and Drummer Boy.

“Well…in the short term, let’s say…what we don’t know won’t hurt anyone. Especially if your synths volunteer as provisioners, which no one wants to do. Keep on the move, not much settler contact, fewer chances to slip up…or just work the circuit down to Somerville, skirt the Glow, and head south once your Geiger counter quits its Krupa imitation. You’ve got my official approval either way.”

“Long term?”

“No promises.” Nora sighs. “But, like you pointed out, we’ve got a mutie Minuteman. Our chief engineer made him special blue armour so he sticks out when we’re invaded by other mutants. The other settlers actually shoot around him. And synths don’t even eat other people. As far as I know. Do they?”

“Well, I can’t personally vouch for each of them…” Desdemona replies, getting a tired, surprised chuckle from Nora.

“But about Switchboard…”

“Yes?”

“Another Gunner stronghold within striking distance of my settlements doesn’t work for me.” She yawns again. “You mind if I put the Brotherhood into it?”

“Yes, actually, I’d mind that very much.”

“Lexington’s choked with ferals and raiders, and the old Corvega plant’s poisoned the ground. It’s got no value to the Minutemen, but Steel? They’d pop their plated zippers over an underground pre-war installation. Pull resources away from the city center to throw at pacifying the town around it, give us all some breathing room.”

“At least until their patrols are smack in the middle of any movement we make.”

“It’s a choice between Gunners now or Brotherhood later.” Nora shrugs. “Deacon, you cleaned the place of any Railroad intel, right?”

Deacon casually slides out from behind a pillar and joins them. “Completely. Dez, this isn’t the worst idea – ”

“Hush now.”

It’s all MacCready can do not to laugh at the snap of Deacon’s teeth clicking together, or Desdemona’s stare like Nora just pulled a rabbit out of her helmet, and then the rabbit recited the first fifty digits of pi.

“Brotherhood’s not going away. Them dug into a secure ground base is, I’d say, two months away at most. Right now, that’s set to be the Common, and a real pain in the ass for all of us. But if we dangle an alternative under their noses, chock full of old-world tech, right down the road from my settlements they can harass for supplies…” She pauses and traces a line on Piper’s map. “…and in an area you’ve already cut out of your network, well, that’s better for all of us.”

“And if the Institute raids the Switchboard again, after your friends have moved in?”

“Well, that depends on whether your bookie favors fixed-odds or spread betting. Either way, I’d stock up on popcorn. It’ll be a hell of a show.”

Desdemona shares a look with Deacon. “So you’re not asking permission?”

“This is more a…professional courtesy.” Nora droops, shifting to tuck her knees close to her chest and resting her chin in the dip in between. “They may lack social graces, but the Commonwealth’s still better off if Steel is here, busy, and useful.”

“And you’re qualified to decide this?”

“Not really.” Nora taps the faded Minuteman crossed swords painted on her helmet. “But I don’t see anyone else around here Generalling, so…”

“Dez – ”

“The ladies are speaking, Deacon. Do be a gentleman.”

Glory stifles a laugh as he shuts up again, looking up from the huge minigun magazine she’s loading with 5mm rounds. “That’s it, we’re keeping you.”

Tinker Tom pulls a cookpot from under his workbench, frowns at the cold boiled grain inside, shrugs and spoons it into bowls before ladling the hot stew on top, stretching the meal to feed as many as possible. “Bone up your appetite, guys.”

Nora scrapes the broth aside to get a good sniff at the grain, grinning when Tom’s head snaps around at the sound. “Thanks, I’m starved - smells good!”

Desdemona takes a bowl and settles against the pillar, watching thoughtfully as Nora shifts over to make room for Tom. Deacon takes over the cooking station, pouring a box of mac and cheese into the pot and chopping up the mutie meat, practically vibrating with the effort of keeping his trap shut.

“Glory has a point.” Desdemona says. “It’d be nice to hold a straightforward strategy update once in a while.”

Deacon leans over the pot, muttering, “It’s as if you people _like_ awkward silences.”

“But your conflicts of interest are a concern.”

“They definitely are to me.”

“How much should I worry?”

“I’m sure the Railroad has an apostate policy.”

Piper whispers in his ear before he can ask. “Someone who abandons the cause.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured,” he hisses back, shifting closer to Nora.

“Oh, we do.” Desdemona scowls, stabbing her stew into the grain. “I’ll take the risk.”

Deacon clangs the spoon against the side of the pot as he stirs.

“We don’t stand much on ceremony here.” Desdemona continues. “But after today’s performance, consider yourself promoted, and officially welcome here in Railroad HQ.”

“Honored to be on board,” Nora replies, shoveling a spoonful in her mouth and swallowing quickly.

Desdemona’s eyes narrow as she considers whether Nora’s joking.

“Piper and I already got the nod,” MacCready tells her quickly. “So for once, I’ve got seniority.”

Desdemona frowns. “No, you don’t.”

“It was a joke.” He withers a little under her flat glare.

“We don’t work that way. There’s me, and Carrington, and then the rest of you. A chain of command requires awareness of where we all stand relative to each other….which means awareness of all agents...which the Institute would be all too happy to torture out of you. Secrecy, compartmentalisation, they keep us alive. Never forget that.”

“It’ll be an adjustment,” Nora nods, “but I’ll learn.”

MacCready chokes and coughs, muttering, “Broth went down the wrong pipe,” as Nora thumps his back, hiding a smirk against his shoulder.

“That being said,” Desdemona continues, “it’d be a waste and an unacceptable risk to use you as ordinary heavies. I’ll be assigning you two to work under Deacon, while you – ” she points to Piper, “ – continue on under Drummer Boy.”

“Yes! Management!” Deacon crows. He turns to Drummer Boy, gesturing to his suit and tie. “Like I always told you: dress for the job you want, not the one you have.”

“You’ve never said that.” Drummer Boy shifts uncomfortably as Piper scoots closer, looking away from her tentative smile.

Nora snorts at that, missing MacCready’s sharp _talk us back out of this now_ look, while Desdemona ignores all three of them. “Your positions out there will make you useful to intel gathering and organisation. And your superiors will both know and…handle the situation…should you mislead us. Are we clear?”

“We could be clearer,” Nora replies mildly, setting her spoon in the bowl.

“How so?” Desdemona asks, crossing her arms again.

“On just how ‘useful’ we’ll be.”

“That’s an excellent question I don’t…yet…have an answer for.” Desdemona glances at Deacon, but he only mimes zipping his lips together and throwing away a key. “I’ve heard rumors of at least one other knight working as a double agent, but you’re definitely our first General. A profile that high makes you at least as much a liability as an asset.”

“Should’ve been a guidance counsellor, Dez,” Nora yawns again. “Missed your calling.”

“A what?”

“Professional dream killer,” Nora shakes her head. “Vault thing. Forget it. So long as we’re clear I won’t – ”

“You don’t have to clear any of this with me, just Deacon. Compartmentalisation and – ”

“Secrecy, right,” Nora nods sharply. “You might have mentioned it once or twice.”

“Code names are part of that,” Desdemona continues, speaking too quickly for Nora to interrupt her again.

“Yeah, Deacon told me.” Nora picks up her spoon again, makes a face, and hands MacCready her bowl. “So we’re all just going to pretend no one knows I’m the Minutemen’s General just because everyone calls me Grognak?”

“We already have a Grognak, actually.”

MacCready checks her serving before scraping it on top of his own with an impatient snort. The grain’s _barely_ moldy, and she obviously needs the calories...but he’ll take them if she won’t.

“Oh. Really? Damn. Do they have a costume, though? I do. _And_ the collector’s edition axe.” Desdemona only shakes her head with a weary sigh. “Fine. How about Shroud, then?”

“That’s taken too, I’m afraid.”

“Silver?”

“Taken.”

“Fantoma?”

Desdemona blows a long plume of smoke. “Maybe you should pick a name that isn’t a major comic book character.”

“Or one of Shakespeare’s, I’m assuming,” Nora purses her lips. “I’m starting to suspect you all only joined up for the cool nicknames.”

“Bly,” Piper interjects. “I call Bly.”

“That one’s fine.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Nora nods. “You can borrow my Shroud costume. It’s the wrong color, but still a trenchcoat.”

It’s a moment before MacCready can place the name - Nell Bly, the Inspector’s girl-reporter main squeeze. Nora’s right, it’s perfect for Piper. Too perfect to be something she just came up with. He wishes she’d warned them they’d need to come up with code names.

“You’re the Silver Shroud, too?” Piper asks, almost dropping her bowl. “Like, _the_ Shroud that cleaned up Goodneighbor?”

“No, don’t be silly,” Nora chides. “I just killed her for the costume and shiny silver gun.”

“Sure,” Piper grins. “Can I borrow the gun, too?”

“Don’t bother – the sights are off and its recoil will cripple your shoulder. Even Mac couldn’t hit the broad end of a brahmin with it.” She watches Deacon pass around bowls of meaty noodles until he scrapes the last of it into one for himself. “It’s pretty much fulfilling its total lifetime potential as a conversation piece on my bedroom wall.”

MacCready coughs again and tries to think of anything that’s not the axe and submachine gun up on nails, or the Grognak and Shroud costumes in the closet, or that time they proved that time-travel crossovers don’t always have to suck...

“So you’re asking me into your bedroom?” Piper mock-flirts.

“There’s an idea.” Nora turns to Desdemona and tries: “Inspector?”

“Also taken.”

“Dammit.”

“And what’s wrong with ‘Blue’?”

“Then you’d have to change yours back to ‘Red’ so we’d still match,” Nora teases.

Piper laughs. “When you put it that way…”

“Forget superheros, think supervillians,” MacCready suggests, shooting her a narrow-eyed look. She holds both hands up in surrender. “‘Winter’.”

Nora opens a bottle of water and thoughtfully sips, giving Piper a broad wink and wrinkling her nose at MacCready. “Like Dr Brainwash? Hmmm. ‘Dr Winter.’ Sounds like a pediatrician.”

“Just ‘Winter’,” he insists, feeling a blush creep up his neck. Looks like she caught that flash of jealousy. Not that he thinks Piper’s actually serious, but he’s had enough of Railroaders chasing his girl for one day. “It, you know, it goes with the name no one here already knows. And it’s got an ominous ring.”

“Maybe once,” she grumbles, leaning into his shoulder again. “Now it means: ‘It’s a little chilly out, better bring a cardigan’. Fine, though. ‘Winter’ it is. How about you?”

“Don’t care.” Or he won’t admit he does, not with Deacon smirking at him and all the good ones taken. “You pick something.”

“I thought she’d be ‘Wanderer’,” Desdemona interjects, glancing at Deacon. “No?”

“Definitely not,” Nora says, the humor draining from her expression.

“Well, it’s up for grabs now if you’d like it?”

MacCready opens his mouth to turn it down – it’s a catchy song, and not one he wants stuck in his head every time they run into a Railroad agent – but Deacon beats him to it.

“No. Doesn’t fit him. At all.” He pokes at the lumps in his cheese sauce, tilting his head to share a stone-faced glare with Nora around the side of his glasses.

“Agreed,” she says, lips tight.

“I got a better suggestion, anyway.” He turns his spotlight smile on MacCready. “‘Lamplight’.”

MacCready stuffs a bite in his mouth to cover how badly that makes him jump and looks, not at Nora, but Tom.

“He’s acting weird, right?” he whispers around a sticky lump of old grain. “It’s not just me?”

Tom nods and taps his nose, eyes showing white all around. “We got to look into this, and pronto.”

“It’s a good Railroad name,” Deacon shrugs. “Makes it clear where your loyalties lie.”

“Whatever.” He’s pretty sure he manages to pull off “annoyed nonchalance,” another one of Nora’s stalling specialties, before finally glancing at her to find she’s doing the same, and taking a long drink of water on top of that. Deacon rattled her, too. “You care a heck of a lot more about it than I do.”

“You sure about that?” Piper laughs. “Lamplight. Huh. I don’t know, it sounds kinda…”

“Kinda what?” MacCready snaps.

She flinches at his expression, and, feeling guilty at dumping his irritation on her twice in less than a minute, he punches her shoulder. “Just messing with ya.”

“No, I mean it’s kinda…kinda like we should get moving before I’ve got both feet permanently trapped in my mouth.” She scoops the last bite out of her bowl and hands it to Tom. “My compliments to the chef.”

“You should come back on rib night,” Tom grins, but his eyes follow Deacon as he drifts back to Carrington’s workbench.

She stands and picks up her pack, but Drummer Boy, after hesitating, takes it from her. “I got that.”

“Oh,” she says, then smiles. “Okay. Guys, stop in next time you hit Diamond City. I’ll hold a copy of this week’s issue for you.”

“We’ve had too much traffic through the front door. Go out the back way,” Desdemona tells Drummer Boy, who nods and takes Piper’s elbow to guide her through the catacomb.

Nora raises an eyebrow at MacCready, lifting her elbow and waggling her shoulders. He frowns back and tilts his head toward Deacon.

She leans over to pick up her bag, lifting her face just enough only he can catch her scrunched eyebrows and head-shake. _Later_.

“You mind packing up for me while I compare calibres with Glory?”

_What the hell did you tell him?_

“On it, boss.”

He opens both bags and dumps the heavier supplies in his, adding a few items from the HQ shelves no one’s going to miss any time soon, as Nora flags down Glory.

“Hey, new girl, welcome to the big leagues! We should, I don’t know, bake a cake. That’s what you do, right?”

“Well, I’d never turn down cake...obviously.”

“Obviously?”

Nora pinches her stomach around the edge of her chestpiece. “Guess that joke doesn’t work as well after all this healthy living out here.”

“Healthy living?” Glory tilts her head, following Nora’s gesture without comprehension. “You vault dwellers are weird.”

“You’re not wrong. Look, I just wanted to introduce myself properly, without guns pointed at each other.”

“It’s Winter now, right? They call me Glory, their angel of death.” She throws her shoulders back in a heroic pose, holding it for a breath or two before the weight of her minigun pulls her back into a slouch. “The ass-kicking poster child of a liberated synth.”

“So you’re really a synth?”

“That’s what the ‘Made in the Institute’ stamp on my ass says.”

Nora scratches the back of her neck. “You mind if I...ask you a few questions there?”

“Yeah, but… I know you’re trying to get to your kid.” Glory rubs at an oil smudge on the minigun’s casing, then echoes Nora’s pose, touching the base of her skull. “I know a whole lot less than you’d think. These components – Tom says they’ve got an element in them that’s always burnt out, when we pull one from a dead synth. He thinks it could be set to blow out a pulse, damage our brains, when they’ve been too long out of range of a kind of…check-in signal inside the Institute. Keep us from knowing how to get back in if we do get away.”

“That’s…” Nora blinks and shuffles her feet. “’You know, I’ve never used the word ‘diabolical’ in real life, but considering we’re surrounded by Grognaks and Phantoms down here, maybe just this once?”

Glory snorts. “I’ll allow it. To be honest, anyway, we’re not designed to think, to remember, not the way you do. It…well…you’ll see what I mean when you meet the packages today.”

 _Packages?_ MacCready thinks. _Well, there’s that ominous ring Nora was missing_.

“Mainly, I did surface detail,” she continues. “Combing over ruins and shit for salvage.”

“Then you know how to get into the Institute – and back out? Quickly, I hope?”

“Sorry,” Glory shakes her head and looks at the shooting range. “I don’t…it’s… I dream about it, sometimes, inside the Institute. Massive machines, building us building us bone by bone, muscle by muscle…we’re not human, no matter what Dez says. We’re _not_. And…I need to shoot something. Now.”

“I’m…hell, I’m sorry. Glory, thanks for trying to…anyway.”

MacCready catches her arm before she can follow the other woman, shaking his head like that’ll clear those images from the inside of his eyelids. “That sounds like a raider camp with better hygiene. Which somehow makes it worse.”

“Dez!” the synth calls. “I’m taking the Murkwater clearance.”

“Be careful,” Desdemona tells her, pulling a folder from her improvised command center and adding a note inside. “That far south, you’ll run into Gunner squads on the roads.”

“I’ll be careful,” Glory replies, with a ghost of a smile. “Won’t miss a single one.”

Nora steps back as she passes, not quite able to catch her eye.

MacCready squeezes her shoulder. “No luck, huh?”

She shakes her head and shivers. “You know, from some angles, Glory looks so much like my mother, it’s eerie.”

“Really?” MacCready cranes his neck to catch another look at Glory before she disappears through the back corridor. “I guess there’s a little resemblance between you two, now that you mention it.”

“Ignore the giant schnoz, if you can,” she says, covering her nose. “That’s Pop’s.”

“It’s a normal, regular-sized nose,” he chides, pushing her hand down, thumb brushing the thin scar underneath.

“I think Doc Weathers actually made it bigger.”

“Shut up.” He forces a chuckle at her attempt to lighten the mood and lifts their bags. “I don’t see Deacon. How about we run for it?”

“God, yes.” She takes hers and pauses, jiggling the few items he’s left in it. “You sure you balanced these right?”

He swings his heavier pack on with his good arm. “I’m sure.”

“You – right. Okay then.” She follows him past the mouldy mattresses in the back corridor and down the old steps to the exit, which proves to be a flooded sewer passage.

“Great,” he mutters, tracing the lines of exposed pipes until he finds a relatively dry path. He takes her hand and starts across. “Wonder if we’ll die of cholera or typhoid?”

Nora steps over a slimy join. “Oh, my caps are on typhoid. Cholera’s the home favorite, sure, but typhoid just wants it more, you know?”

He ignores the joke and drops to a whisper, now that they’re out of any agents’ earshot. “Why’d you tell him about me?”

He overbalances as she lets go, teeters over sewage.

“You think I’d do that?” she hisses back.

He crouches on the pipe to catch his balance, his weak hand scrabbling for purchase on the old metal. “Maybe…you slipped, or things got out of hand, like on the Prydwen?”

He trails off as her glare loses its heat, until she slumps and reaches for his hand again. He stands and helps her across the gap, steadies her when her boot slides with a squeak across the damp, cracked paint.

“God, it stinks down here,” she mutters. “When did seawater turn so rank?”

“Nor…”

“I wouldn’t do that.” She looks over her shoulder and steps past him on the pipe. “Not when he practically painted a bulls-eye on your forehead from the moment we faced those lights.”

“So…what? He couldn’t have gotten that close out on the road.”

Although Carrington was working with a stealth boy…

“He mentioned a contact in D.C. With our luck, it’s almost certainly – ”

“Her,” he interrupts, unwilling to risk whispering the name even when they’re probably unwatched. He takes a deep breath, immediately regrets it, and pushes his hat back to scratch at his hair.

“Yeah. Your angry vault lady. He might even have met you himself down there, sometime last year. Said he regularly checks the trail as an impostor synth. You ever handle the, uh, packages?”

There’s definitely a dirty joke in there, but he can’t quite bring himself to find it.

“Ran her refugees between bases sometimes. Could've been synths.” He tries to picture them, remember someone tall and skinny and hiding behind sunglasses, but…they’re a blur of brahmin-faces empty of anything but fear. Idiots who couldn’t protect themselves, clinging to any skirt that didn’t shake them off.

“So, what? He tells Desdemona you used to work on the Railroad’s other end? She’d probably promote you. He’s just shaking your cage.”

He pushes the hat back down to its usual indentation in his forehead, listens to the quiet noises of the sewer slop beneath them, and admits, “Used to work a north-south highway outside Steel territory, off the caravan lines, before she hired me on.”

He’s a little relieved at the compulsive tightening of her grip, the deliberate softening almost immediately afterward. Means he doesn’t have to spell out it was during the “ambush and scav the bodies” stretch of his job history.

“The kind of road only outlaws and desperate people take. Wouldn’t surprise me if…but I don’t think anyone who escaped got a good look at me.” He chuckles grimly. “Wouldn’t’ve been running from just one man and a toddler, if they had.”

“So…” She shakes her head and steps over the gap to a drier pipe, letting go of his hand. It runs into the wall at the bend in the tunnel, but she follows it to the end anyway, hunching down to brace her shoulder against the bricks. He moves in parallel, more carefully on the slick metal of the pipe that’ll take them through to dry concrete, as she checks the passageway behind and ahead of them, before pointing into the water.

“The problem’s there.”

“Huh?” He leans over carefully, half-expecting to catch Deacon in scuba gear beneath them.

“You can tell by the bubbles. The main break’s down there somewhere. They really need to drain this, weld wherever the harbor’s leaking in, and patch all the rust holes in the old sewage pipes, if they’re going to spend any real time back in HQ.”

“Okay.” He taps the bricks behind him, watching her watch bubbles.

“Don’t think I’ll be volunteering for that job.”

“Nor, if that other train of thought gets back around by you, feel free to hop on, huh?”

“Yeah, I know. Just thinking.” She watches the silent water ahead of them for a moment. “It helps, sometimes, to focus on a totally unrelated…okay, see, worst case scenario, the Railroad does use that highway, you killed a bunch of synths, and Deacon knows. So he’ll what, tell Dez? He’s already vouched for you. It’d be his ass, too.”

“That’s not the worst. If he knows her…”

“I know. Wait.” She shifts her gaze to the pipes behind them, chewing her lip like she’s poking at a tough lock. “Let me work out the highway robbery angle first.”

He swallows and leans back against his wall, nodding mutely. _Lamplight_ echoes again through his brain. If Deacon knows about that, he could know…everything. 101, her defection, the bounty on her head…her friends…Duncan. Maybe even where she’s keeping him. Where… If she’s… If it…

“He wants to use whatever he knows, even if it’s just that you’re from D.C. and worked with his contact – especially if that’s all he knows – to keep you off balance. And a secret’s only any use if it stays that way. So I can almost guarantee we’re fine.”

“We’re fine?” He grabs a pipe over his head to lean closer, not even wincing at the stab of pain that sends through his shoulder. “You’re fine?”

“Dandy as apples.” She looks past him again, tilting her head like there’s anything to hear behind them but sloshy drips. “Okay, what’d I miss?”

“Like I’d think of something you haven’t,” he scoffs. “It’s just…I kinda doubt someone like you’s got nothing else to say about killing innocent people.”

“You want me to clutch my pearls?” she asks. “You’ll have to scav me a string, first, and then the morals to give a damn. I hired you to help me murder and rob people, remember?”

“Well, yeah, the psychos Preston put you onto, raiders and Gunners,” he argues. “Even those snooty Regulator pricks down south would shake your hand. This was different.”

“Not really.” She rubs her eyes again. “Beating up criminals is comic book shit. The Silver Shroud, hah, the nightmare he’d make of the chain of evidence alone…and he usually didn’t even kill them, let alone take all their stuff like murder makes you next of kin. No, I’m not going to look down my nose because you decided everyone else’s life was less important than your kid’s.”

He swallows and nods, not quite trusting his throat to work for anything else. It’s not like he can tell her that’s changed.

“I’ve got a…realistic…idea of a Goodneighbor mercenary’s job history. You want to have that talk – and hell, maybe we should, just in case there’s anything else that could bite us in the ass – it’ll be okay.”

That _us_ echoes in his head. It’s not exactly the stuff of Pyramus and Thisbe, but he’ll take it.

“Okay. Yeah. Don’t know what karma I cashed, but I definitely don’t deserve someone as good as you.”

“Good?” she snorts. “Sure. Maybe on the Commonwealth scale, but that’s a fair trot from ‘I will employ only those means consistent with truth and honor’. Not that I ever managed to live up to that oath so well.”

“You’re kidding, right? Sure, you’re no saint, but your people, you take care of them. Me, hah. First thing I did, when I knew you cared about me, more than just a hired gun…I used you to get into Med-Tek.”

“And I’m still pissed you didn’t bring it up sooner. We could already – ” Her lips twist down on the words as she looks sharply behind them again. “It’ll have to wait. I think we’re alone, except…that prototype Carrington was playing with? I can usually spot a stealth field, but his was almost seamless.”

He follows her gaze and sees nothing, hears nothing. “You think?”

“I think…I think these people have infected my brain. I’m seeing boogiemen. But I’m too damn tired to have a conversation beyond ‘Igor fetch good brain, mathter!’ anyway. I have an idea, well, half an idea, to get ahead of this, but…later, okay?”

“Yeah. Later.”

She scoots back along the pipe and steps over to his, following him to the dry concrete on the other side, through a crumbling doorway into an old utility tunnel.

 _Lamplight_ , he thinks again, and then more firmly, _Later_.

 _Later_.

She stops him at the foot of a dark stairwell. “Let me scout ahead first.”

“Piper and Drummer Boy just went through here.”

“I want to be sure.”

He shrugs and steps back, turning around quickly as Nora rounds the landing. Is that a brush of air against his neck? He turns back, grabbing at thin air between him and the stairs, catches nothing.

 _Tom’s paranoia is catching_ , he thinks, lighting a cigarette from his stolen pack, casually watching the exhaled smoke as he paces for any unusual eddies.

Still nothing.

Of course there’d be nothing. If Deacon’s following, he’ll be after Nora. Who’s been away at least a minute longer than a quick scout should have taken…

Her head pops over the top railing as he starts up the stairs. “All clear.”

“What took you so long?”

“Hmm.” She reaches for his hand again, her rueful smile turning almost delighted as he stretches their arms, walking along the opposite wall of the corridor so any invisible watchers ahead of them will have to duck quickly or get clotheslined. “Well, I definitely wasn’t waving my arms around every corner.”

“Yeah. Me neither.”

“Christ on a cracker.” She laughs through a long groan. “I want to go home. I want to go home and booby-trap every inch of ground within a hundred yards of the bedroom.”

“Yeah, that. I vote we do that. Let’s go pick up Valentine and blow off this idiot parade.” And damn if he doesn’t long for it, a little, the familiar patterns of light breaking in through the roof, their stuff laid out clean in Codsworth’s fussy piles, Dogmeat’s nails clicking on the patchy linoleum before he jumps up on the bed and shakes out muddy fur. “Doubt there’s anything else we can learn from these weirdos.”

“No, I’m doing this. They could still be useful.” She pulls him closer, checking her pipboy map. “I mean, you’re right. From what Glory says, no synth will know a better way in. There’s got to be an old entrance from before they developed a teleporter, that I could break into with a mini-nuke or two, but…I probably already killed the only guy who knew where it’d be.”

“He’d never have told you anyway,” MacCready tries to sooth her.

“Probably. He definitely had more practice resisting torture than I have dishing it out.” She kicks a can down the hallway. “Although now I know we could’ve just crippled his limbs, dragged him back to the Memory Den, and had Dr Amari root out every useful fact in that skull. Which, uh, reminds me – have you ever gone in one of those pods?”

“I look like one of those pathetic chumps?”

“…I did once.”

“And by ‘pathetic chump’ I meant…nah, forget it. I’ll just stand by that one.”

“Ha, ha. Yeah, I’d just…continue avoiding them. Hey, there’s a fusion core in there!”

She leans on a mag-locked gate hopefully, but it doesn’t budge.

“Thought you had plenty?”

“I can always use another. Give me a minute to shake hands with the terminal.”

 _Man, Nora and her fusion cores._ He shakes his head. _Shaun’ll be grown with his own kids and she’ll still be overjoyed every time I bring one home._

He checks ahead, poking his head out the next door to find outer walls secured with boards and chains; safe enough. Back inside, he watches over her shoulder as she bypasses the login request and opens a programming window, testing the terminal’s security. Lines of code blip out of existence as she types, working down to the one that’ll let her in.

“Where’d you learn that?” he asks, stubbing out the cigarette on the bottom of his boot.

She curses under her breath as the terminal beeps, rejecting her command. “College, some of it, working in the library. But this, the good stuff, I learned in D.C. The seminars on what we weren’t allowed to do were practically tutorials on how to do it.”

She pauses and stares through the mesh gate.

“After the major pulled that cute trick with Doc M’s counselling records, I hacked his password. Added a little malware to a Tunisian Pipfall knockoff and installed it on his terminal. It locked up the department server – nothing the infotechies couldn’t dig back out while us girls enjoyed a leisurely three-martini lunch, but he was formally reprimanded. Probably cost him a promotion or two.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“If I was caught, forget reprimands. I’d have been court-martialled and joined Lupe and Marilyn behind barbed wire. Not to mention what’d happen to Nate if wifey back home went down for espionage. It was stupid, a huge risk just to indulge in a little ego rampage.”

“You got away with it,” he points out.

“I was an idiot, a smart one. The worst kind. And…there we go.”

The lock clanks apart. She drops her bag to prop it open behind her and yanks the core out of the fusion generator. Overhead, the lights flicker, die, and come back on at half levels.

“You think the HQ just went dark?”

“We should leg it just in case.”

She leans on the generator instead, pulling on the collar of her fatigues until it rips at the back. “Ah, balls. Wish I hadn’t sold that Gunner uniform, now. You think these’ll hold up another day?”

“Probably,” he says, not sure if they’re actually back on good enough terms to wrap his arms around her waist, tuck his chin over her shoulder, but she looks too dog-tired and lonesome to resist. “You want to trade?”

“No, no. If these give out on me mid-firefight, it won’t even be the first time I’ve gone into battle boobs-first like some flaming Boudicca statue.” She unhooks the strap of her helmet, tilts her head until it falls to the concrete with a clonk, and rests her head against his with a sigh. “Plus? That underarmor does great things for your ass. It’s a shame I’ll be taking point out there.”

He scoffs quietly, feeling her smile as his cheek heats up against hers. He presses his nose into the bare skin of her neck…

…which shouldn’t be bare.

“Hey, where’s your necklace?”

“Battle casualty.”

“Damn. The rings, too?”

She pushes her sleeve up and shows them, loosely knotted around her wrist. “My hair laid down its life for them. Tragic, yet inspirational.”

He chuckles faintly at that, relieved at the sight. It’d have hurt her like heck to lose them. Which she still will, if she’s not careful. “That knot won’t hold. You want me to put them in the medkit?”

She shakes her head. “I want to keep them on me. Stupid, I know, but…”

He picks the knot apart and re-ties it more securely. “Let’s see that hair.”

“Deacon said it was fine.” She unloops the remains of her bun, pocketing hairpins until the curls hang in a lopsided mess.

“Yeah.” He tries to phrase it kindly. “Deacon lied.”

“Color me gobsmacked.”

“Looks like laser burns. Guess that’s where you got all the pistols, huh?”

“I got careless. Forgot you weren’t with me and stepped right into the fire on my own.”

He suppresses an angry shudder at that image and replies lightly. “I mean, there’s a certain raider-chic edge to it, but you should really commit and shave that half entirely if you want to join a gang.”

She hands him her combat knife. “You mind evening it up, at least?”

“You think I’d be seen in public with you otherwise?”

She snorts and turns so he can take a fistful of hair at the back of her neck, slicing through as gently as possible. Most of it falls to floor at their feet, but one curl winds tight around his thumb. It’s almost as short now as in that old photo, with newborn Shaun on her shoulder, but the face that looks back at him is thinner and scarred.

“How’s it look?”

He touches the edge of Doc Weathers’ incision on her cheek, barely visible after months of healing.

“It’ll grow back.”

She pulls away from the touch and pins locks back out of her face with practiced speed. “Your honesty is…refreshing, actually. Thanks.”

“You’re still beautiful.”

“I’ve still got a great personality,” she corrects wryly and mutters, “I’m like a reverse Samson. Lose my powers, then my hair.”

“Any other way I can wait on you hand and foot, boss?” he asks, wanting to see her smile again. “Need your shoes tied?”

“Yes,” she shoots back. “Immediately.”

He looks down, checking his pack of smokes is still in his pocket. If her curl’s left behind when he pulls his hand out, it’s accidental, not creepy. “They’re already tied.”

She raises an eyebrow. “They could be tied better.”

He laughs quietly, liking the ghost of a twinkle in her eyes. “On it, boss.”

A drawn-out groan of disgust makes them both jump.

“This is unbearable.” With a snap and a whiff of ozone, Deacon appears with Carrington’s stealth boy on his wrist, leaning on the generator next to Nora. “You guys, I have been right here the – ”

He’s already moving, rolling to one side to avoid MacCready’s fist, but not fast enough to dodge Nora’s vicious boot to the shin.

He hops back out of range, squawking, “Ow, ow, ow – do you mind? That _really_ hurt.”

“Could’ve been worse,” she growls, treads grinding the grit underfoot as she pivots, raising her fists, before letting them drop with a sigh. “Okay, that’s a lie. A lucky shot like that was pretty much the best I could hope for.”

MacCready reluctantly lets his new gun sink back in its holster as the skin on his back tries to curl up and roll away at the thought of Deacon lurking, smirking, a breath away from them. “You really are a creep.”

“You honestly had no idea I was right behind you?” Deacon asks Nora. “The whole time?”

Her mouth twists. “Thought I smelled you. Then I figured it was just the old sewer water.”

“Carrington’ll be thrilled,” Deacon crows, ignoring the jab. “Well, not thrilled. Maybe he’ll smile. Well…maybe he’ll frown a little less.”

“Great,” MacCready replies sourly.

Deacon points at the hole in the generator. “You should put that back. Tom hasn’t worked out the ventilation for the auxiliary generators yet. Or, in fact, built the auxiliary generators.”

Nora takes the fusion core from her bag and, without breaking eye contact with Deacon, reaches behind her back and punches the core into place.

“Good underling!” Deacon gives her a double thumbs-up. “And maybe, in the future? We leave anything secured behind maximum encryption alone. Okay?”

“Even when it’s a very, _very_ pretty dress?” Nora clasps her hands under her chin.

Deacon echoes the gesture, arching his fingers together to make a heart. “Only if it’s something with a little slink. Ooh, or sequins! But not too many. The end of the world is no reason to look cheap.”

She looks away and sniffs, trying not to laugh, and MacCready’s suddenly, uneasily, sure she wouldn’t be hiding it if he wasn’t there.

Deacon’s fake-stern expression cracks into his usual grin. “Anything would be better than those fatigues. I doubt they’ll last the walk, the way you insist on catching every bullet like there’s caps glued to them. Want to borrow something prettier to wear?”

“You got anything that’ll keep her skin in one piece for more than a minute out there?” MacCready asks.

“Only…all of it,” Deacon replies, looking at Nora, and flips up his sleeve to show her a fine mesh inside. “Ballistic weave, at least as strong as a vault suit. Tom can show you how he makes it…at least, once he’s done processing the blood and urine samples he insisted I leave with him. For some reason.”

He turns his smile on MacCready for a beat.

“Which, given his chem station is also our kitchen, is less than ideal.”

“Thank you, Deacon,” Nora interrupts, abruptly shifting to the “gracious housewife” voice that got him to shut up earlier. “The loan would be appreciated.”

MacCready disappears from his awareness again as he turns back to Nora, eagerly digging in his pack. “Here.”

She accepts the roll of clothing with a cordial nod. MacCready takes it before she can tuck it under her arm and gets a closer look at the mesh, testing it with his fingernail.

“Get changed,” Deacon orders. “We need to hit the road.”

“Don’t worry, we’ve got this one. I’ll report back afterward.”

“No, _we_ should get going. Us two. The team.”

“Right,” Nora drawls. “The team.”

“The team I’m in charge of, specifically. Which includes you, buddy,” he points at MacCready and clicks his tongue, “but not this time. You’re confined to HQ until Carrington clears you for duty.”

“No fu– ”

Nora steps between them, taking Deacon’s hand just before he can poke MacCready in the Brotherhood logo. Deacon startles and tries to pull away, but she holds firm and starts to back out of the generator room, dragging him along.

“A good manager knows when to delegate,” Nora chides, as gentle as if he’s an honored guest about to track mud into her clean living room. “And gives all in his team the chance to excel, rather than playing favorites.”

“I get it – this is hazing, right?” His mouth flaps for a second as he looks down at his trapped hand. An interesting weakness, MacCready thinks. But not one he’d have any luck exploiting. “Give the new boss a hard time, ha ha, and then we all get down to business rather than adding two fresh corpses to the decor?”

MacCready rolls his shoulders and touches his new gun’s handle. “You always use death threats to keep your people in line?”

Deacon points with the hand still firmly enclosed in Nora’s. “She started it.”

Nora wrinkles her nose at MacCready. “He’s right, I did start it.”

He snorts. “Should I pretend to be surprised?”

Deacon clears his throat and pulls at their hands, harder this time, and Nora lets him go. He tucks it in his pocket, where it moves like he’s trying to rub away girl cooties. “This isn’t the Brotherhood. We don’t have free-range agents.”

Nora’s voice drops lower as she shoos him out the gate and settles back against the generator. “Now you do.”

“You follow orders, and to the letter,” he continues like she hasn’t spoken. “Or there’s consequences. Dez won’t hesitate, any more than they do down south. You know what I’m talking about, Lamplight?”

“I…know that any contract signed under duress’s invalid.” He raises an eyebrow at Nora as she bursts out laughing. “Right?”

She hiccups, wipes her nose, and nods. “You – you really do listen to me, huh?”

“I can be taught,” he shrugs.

“This isn’t the old world,” Deacon interrupts.

“ _I_ am the old world,” Nora tells him. “Living, breathing, apparently never sleeping again, but right here in the middle of this mess. If you want to pitch in my ballpark, you’ll have to respect my rules.”

“I truly cannot wait to see what the Institute makes of that attitude.”

“Me neither,” she shoots back. “Because, one way or another, it’ll mean I’m with my son.”

Deacon shifts on his feet like he’s ready to punch her, but his hands don’t leave their pockets. Nora’s shoulders tighten as the quiet stretches, chin lifted like a dare until MacCready touches her elbow.

She nods and breathes in slow. “Well, boss, this was a great staff meeting. I sure feel super-motivated to raise my KPIs this quarter. But right now the only bullet point of any importance is optimising my work-life balance.”

Deacon’s eyebrows creep together before, in desperation, he glances at MacCready, who shrugs.

“You’ve genuinely lost me there,” Deacon finally tells her, as she tries to look casual stretching muscles that quiver with tension.

“By which I mean, me and him? We’re going to be significantly less clothed in the very near future.”

MacCready raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

“You could back me up here.”

“I’m definitely backing you up here.” He glances at the generator ledge behind her, automatically judging it’s the best combination of sturdiness and vantage point. “So to speak.”

She tightens her lips against a smirk. “So you can either hang around to third-wheel that, or meet us in Bunker Hill. And if you could order me a bowl of noodles? The ones with fake shrimp instead of fake beef.”

“Beef for me,” MacCready pipes up, almost suppressing a shudder. He is not going to think about all the times Deacon was creeping on them…he isn’t going to think about it…dammit.

Deacon taps his foot restlessly for a few moments before giving up. “I’ll go secure the perimeter, then.”

“You secure the hell out of that perimeter.”

He moves away slowly, almost like he really expects to be called back. When the outer door finally, _finally_ clicks shut behind him, Nora drops her head back to the generator and blows out a rude sigh.

“God, he reminds me of Nate.”

“What?” MacCready sputters. “I can’t picture that.”

Mostly because he can only figure Nora’d have gunned her husband down centuries before Kellogg ever got the chance, if that was true, but he’s sure as heck not saying that out loud.

“Everything’s an argument. Even ‘who actually forgot to pick up milk’ is…was like defending Julius and Ethel before the grand jury.” She fiddles with the rings tied around her wrist. “I forgot how exhausting that could be.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

It sounds like a lousy way to live…is another thing he’s not saying out loud. Maybe marrying someone you grew up with means you know what questions to just avoid, most of the time, but still. He can’t imagine staying with someone who fights you for every inch.

“They were…eh. More people centuries dead, now.” She reaches for his hand again. “C’mere, will you?”

“What, you really wanna give Deacon a thrill?” He goes along anyway, running his fingers through the uneven hair at the back of her neck. “You know he’s got that stealth boy on again.”

“I just need a hug.”

She smells like days-old mutie guts and sickly sweet coolant and, underneath all that, just her own skin and he wishes again that they were home. That he’d listened to his second and third thoughts and never told her what he suspected about the Railroad.

Except, of course, they wouldn’t have been home together then, either. She and her pack full of fusion cores would be on the road south with Valentine, heading into the Glowing Sea without him. At least then he wouldn’t be –

He trips up the thought before it can stick the landing. She had a point, before it all went to hell, that they shouldn't fight right now. They might not get much more time together.

“So I guess our days of going at it like horny teenagers are over?” she murmurs.

“I wouldn't say that. Just, maybe...eh. We'll stick a lot closer to home anyway, soon enough. Won't have to watch out all the time for raiders, or mirelurks, or creepy Railroad agents.”

“That does sound nice.” She squeezes his bicep like checking whether it’s a mutfruit ripe enough to pick and pulls away. “So that's a ‘no’ then to anything right now?”

“We probably should've been more careful before.” Like a Triggerman’s shotgun against his head could have made clear way back in that Goodneighbor warehouse.

“Well, yeah, of course...but where's the fun in that?”

As always, Nora’s got an excellent counter-argument. And an even more convincing stretch of stomach as she lifts the uniform shirt up, the thin teeshirt underneath rucking up, tugging on her skin in the places it's stained dark before pulling away.

That’s blood, he thinks, but she’s unhurt underneath, so it must have been his. So much that it soaked through the fatigues to her skin. But not hers. His thumbs brush along the smooth line of her back, over the bumps of her spine, strong and solid and sleek – _square_ , she corrects, and _but who cares, a nice swing dress hides all sins_ – around to the diminishing softness of her stomach – _chubby girl, yeah, but a lotta laughs_ , she says, talking through her nose, screwing up her mouth, shrugging expansively, _adequate tits, too_ , and the almost-rhyme makes him laugh every time he remembers it – and she’s leaving him behind again. Soon.

And he’s gonna, what? Rattle around their house in Sanctuary, waiting on word that might never come?

“You change your mind?”

“Maybe.”

She drops the shirts and leans back against him, wriggling into his open jacket for warmth as he spreads his fingers along all that bare skin just below her bra, not with any intent. Not yet.

“I know things are weird right now.”

“Maybe.”

“And we can probably get a real bed in Bunker Hill later. I don’t think this thing’ll take us all night.”

“The bunkhouse? Not exactly private.”

“You’ve assured me that’s perfectly normal. People just ignore anything happening one bed over.”

“Not the kinda anythings we get up to.” Her amused snort makes him smile, a little. “Anyway, you think that’d keep him away, with a stealth boy like that?”

“Eh…he assured me he’s not actually a peeping tom.”

From the brush of her hair against his armour, though, she’s still checking the corners, again and again.

“Yeah, well, if Deacon said the sky’s blue, I’d still check twice it hadn’t turned pink overnight.”

“He was telling the truth then. Well, he was supposed to be. Who knows, really?” Her laugh has an edge that could cut glass. “He further assured me my ‘amateur performance’ isn’t worth spying on, anyway.”

MacCready scowls. “That guy is _such_ an asshole.”

Her chuckle slides into a long hmmm as she squirms closer. “I do love it when you curse.”

“Don’t tell me that. It’s hard enough to keep it clean without knowing you like it.”

“There’s plenty about you I like. Throw me a pity ‘damn’ or ‘fuck’ once a week or so, and I’ll be good.”

He chuckles silently into her shoulder, shaking his head. She still slips up, a lot more than once a week, but she’s trying. He can picture it, almost, the way she jumps a little and touches her lips, Duncan immediately repeating it, bouncing around the way he does when he knows he’s going to get away with something…

She pulls away; he’s been quiet longer than he realised. “Bunker Hill it is.”

“No, hey…” His fingers only brush her back as she crouches. “Come here. It’s fine.”

“It’s not. That’s okay. Let me know when…” She stuffs the ruined shirts in the bottom of her bag and pulls Deacon’s on over her head, wrinkling her nose. “Well, we’ll have time later.”

She yanks the power core out of the generator again.

“You know you’re probably giving Tinker Tom fits, jacking the power on and off?”

“I’d expect a light breeze would do that.” She shakes out the rest of the clothing, jeans and a leather jacket. “You don’t actually need a core to run these generators, you know. It’s just a safety cut-off. A little re-wiring inside, and Bob’s your uncle. Of course, he’ll need a core to jump-start the system again, but I saw a spare on his workbench.”

MacCready clears his throat and pulls it from his bag. “This one?”

“Oh, you kid.” Nora rubs her nose, and slams the fusion core back into place. The lights flicker on again.

“Tom’s definitely shooting up the HQ now.”

“I’ll make it up to him,” Nora sighs. “What’s his ride of choice – everything? I’d guess it’s everything.”

“Anything but Nuka Cherry. Trust me on that.”

“We should set him up with Cait,” she says. “And send them on an all-expenses-paid date to the Mildred Ford Clinic.”

“Hancock, maybe,” he suggests, figuring that was a fancy old world drunk tank. Not that they could drag Cait into one of them even if it still existed. Maybe Danse was right, and they can lure her into Cade’s grasp with the promise of a minigun like Glory’s.

“You think?”

“I get that feeling,” he shrugs. “Cait wouldn’t have any use for a guy like that, except maybe cracking his bones to get at the marrow. Hancock’d be all over a stoned-conspiracy-minded-genius type, especially if he got to play the white knight.”

“Oh, that’s not how I ever thought I’d picture John.” She laughs a little, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. She’s still checking corners, her shoulders tensed tight and high. “Now I kind of want to lend him my power armor and a Giddyup Buttercup. So that’s how you pass the time, plotting to set up our friends?”

“Nah,” he shrugs, then admits, “Well, maybe. Hey, us old married guys have to make our own fun.”

She sits on the concrete floor to shuck off her boots, changing into a fresh pair of socks while she’s at it. Her toes wriggle against the clean fabric as she stretches out her leg, hiking the old army socks up her shin.

“So what’s your take on Piper and Drummer Boy, then?”

“Hmm?” He drags his attention away from the line of her calf. “Oh, those two? I dunno, maybe they’ll get on okay. Short term, at least. Bet she’ll get bored with him.”

“Really?”

“He doesn’t seem to have a very big…vocabulary.”

She doesn’t laugh, and her smile’s a little stiff when she responds, “Well, he’s no smooth-talking merc.”

“Smooth-talking what now?” he echoes, and then as the memory of them snickering together falls into place, “Oh. What’d I do, and how much trouble am I in once I remember?”

“Nothing, I think,” she chuckles faintly. “I was busy mapping…beating your Red Menace scores while you showed her which end of a gun goes bang. You two hit it off so well she had a whole night at the Dugout planned.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

“Huh. That’s…interesting.”

She twists, pulling on one elbow until her shoulder pops, and doesn’t elaborate.

“But you and her seem…fine?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure, we didn’t speak to each other for years, but then had a long, boozy heart-to-heart and hugged it out.”

“Ha, ha.” He relaxes a little. It couldn’t’ve been a big deal if she’s joking about it, and if she’s still happy to travel with Piper. She definitely isn’t waiting until they’ve finally argued out the Brotherhood of Steel mess to spring that one on him.

Probably.

Although that is exactly the kind of move she’d pull. She’d admit it was unfair, but she’d do it anyway.

Only then does it sink in: a girl damn near pretty as Lucy and no slouch in the brains department wanted to hit the Dugout with _him_. Sure, he’s still amazed when Nora gives him that happy grin after pulling off a clean headshot like he taught her, or convincing some vendor selling her ammo at cost is what they want to do, or “your legs go here and mine go this way and if we don’t fall over it’ll feel amazing” actually works, but he’d had weeks to show off his skills with her.

“Have to admit – I’m kinda impressed.”

She stands and shucks off the fatigue trousers with awkward hops in her stocking feet. “See, you’d be killing it on the Commonwealth singles scene. Something to keep in mind, huh?”

“Damn it, Nora.” He knew it was too good to be true. “Man, I was _just_ thinking things were okay – ”

“They are, they are!” She drops the trousers on her bag. “It…it was funnier in my head. Which is tired. It was a stupid tired-brain joke. Okay?”

“Yeah,” he says, “Yeah, okay.” Then, “No, actually.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured.” She pushes her bag against the generator and sits on it, grunting as her back thumps hard on the lower vent. “Gimme your pack.”

He shifts if off his shoulders, hiding a wince as the drag of the strap sets off a jolt of pain like he’s bashed his elbow. She’s seen it, though, eyes narrowing as she digs out the lunchbox.

“We’ve got a couple shots of med-x left.”

“Save them.” They’re not travelling with Piper any more. He’d rather hurt than slow them down even a little.

She shrugs, with a sharp sigh that gets across how she feels about that better than any words could, and dry-swallows a dose of buffout.

“There’s water in the side pocket,” he says, but she waves him off and pops a couple of mentats from a fresh pack that could’ve gotten them 40 caps. “Go easy on that stuff. You’re not used to it.”

“It’s fine.”

“Just how much of a pick-me-up do you need?” he asks as she shakes the lunchbox, flicking a syringe of psycho aside.

“I’m aiming for ‘normal’, thank you very much.” She sets the lunchbox between them and digs deeper in his bag.

“Maybe you oughta keep that addictol handy, then.”

“Why?” she asks, giving his bottle of whisky a long look before packing it away again.

“You vault dwellers don’t grow up with this stuff.”

“I was a vault dweller for twenty minutes…give or take a century.” She laughs, but quietly, like it’s only with herself. “I’d guess they had to hoard their drug supplies, but back in my day, well…there’s a reason we still scav so much. Mentats were cheaper than aspirin. I probably went through a pack a day back in college.”

“Oh,” he says, as his mental picture of pre-war Nora shifts to include the mentats jabbers and foul mood coming down…which isn’t that much of a stretch, actually. After riding out a few of her hangovers, he’s never argued with her no-drunk-Nora policy.

“So don’t worry, I can handle it. Probably better than you, wastelander – no offense. And where the hell are your cigarettes?”

He takes his bag back and sits down against the wall across from her. “You don’t smoke.”

“I used to.”

He lights one for her and stretches to set it between her fingers, watching as she carefully puffs and immediately coughs. “Yeah, I can tell.”

“You quit for two hundred years and see how you do.” Her second drag is smoother, even as her hands begin to tremble from the combined stimulants hit.

“Fine, Grognak. You do you.” That line between her eyebrows deepens; the buffout’s definitely kicking in. “I can go find Hancock if you’d prefer company that’d be impressed.”

“Or you could still catch up to Piper.”

“I could, at that.” He crosses his arms, waits to see if she’ll take the bait, but she says nothing. “Shit, Nor, I pass up the chance to get in your pants _once_ and you’re ready to write me off?”

“That would be stupid,” she scoffs, so he’s pretty sure he’s on to something. She taps the fingers holding her cigarette on her knee, scattering ash.

“You’re stupid,” he retorts half-heartedly.

“That’s more like it.”

“You’re not stupid.”

He recognises the words as they come out of his mouth, one of Duncan’s routines. The exchanges you have twenty times a day with a three-year-old until it’s so automatic you’re reprimanding adults to be nice or go stand in the corner.

_You’re stoopit!_

_Duncan, don’t call people stupid._

_…you’re not stoopit._

Always concluded with arms raised for a hug, or a punch-and-run, depending on the little guy’s mood. Duncan kept it up the whole trip south from the Republic of Rosie, almost certainly egged on by Butch every time MacCready had to go scout ahead. That was…was it 92? 108? He was no good with the numbers. There was the one with the deathclaws. The one he had to slither through the air ducts twice before he found all the drug pumps.

Then the one that got Duncan sick.

And he knew it was bad when the kid stopped calling them all stupid.

“Hey, just because I can hold up both sides of an argument, doesn’t mean I will,” Nora’s saying.

It didn’t seem so bad, at first, just a fever, and she said it was probably a bug picked up from the Commons kids he’d been playing with. Just keep him wrapped up, get a couple bottles of aqua pura into his belly, and he’d be fine. But then those strange boils started rising on his chest and spreading…

He couldn’t picture it before, wherever she’s stashed him, safe, she said, she insisted, just like going to sleep. But also like hitting the pause button on a holotape. But safe. Definitely safe.

“First you cover how angry you are, then you get into exactly why, and then if there’s time, how impossible it is for me to ever make it up to you.”

So maybe, if he’d thought at all, he’d picture Duncan asleep, sprawled out like always. Not like those people from Nora’s town, like Nate, packed tight in airless pods, nothing at all like beds. More like…more like…not like beds.

“He was following you before we met, right?”

“Who, Deacon? Um…okay. Yes, he was.” Her face moves, but barely, twitching between the haughty stingwing-shooting glare that means treading carefully’s a lost cause and real concern crinkling her eyebrows. Like she’d put the brakes on if she could. “Since the vault, actually, on and off.”

“And he knew you were Steel when I hired on?”

“No,” she says, jumping ahead of his train of thought, and then more insistently, “No! She’s a doctor, right? No doctor would remove a gravely ill patient from the cryo unit keeping them stable – and you’ve seen those bastards. She couldn’t move it on its own, let alone with a power source to keep it going. And Deacon! Deacon – we’re talking about Deacon and a secret. Why would he give it away before he had to? He’s probably got a special hand-tooled hope chest he hoards them all in.”

“Do you hear how fast you’re talking?”

It can’t be half as fast as her brain moves.

“Deacon’s a problem – he’s a now-problem, not a then-problem. A problem still to come. And we can handle him. I can handle him.”

“You can?”

“I can. Definitely. He’s a spy, but I’m a lawyer. I move dangerous men around like checkers.”

She’s not wrong. He’s seen her push Danse and Maxson into place like they wanted to be there. Hell, he’s probably been one of those checkers and never even noticed.

Not like he’s ever the one moving himself around. Life just kind of...happens to him.

“Mac?”

“Hmm?”

“Did you hear me?”

“Guess not.”

“Daisy’s trader – I said she’s been down and back, and it’s been weeks without even a word.” She plays with the knot in the leather at her wrist. “I’d figured, by the time I went into the glowing sea, you’d already be gone.”

He sits up sharply, but she shakes her head before he can speak.

“Split up, I mean. In different directions. You’d get word, and head south. Meet up with her.”

“To bring him back here,” he insists. “To Sanctuary. We’ve got the place all set up for – ”

“For him, we do,” she agrees softly. The leather snaps between her fingers. “Dammit.”

“Give it here before you lose them under the generator or something.” He flips open the med supplies lunchbox and hesitates before dropping them in loose – they’ll rattle and give his location away. He ties them to Duncan’s wooden soldier instead, holds it up and shakes it so she can see they’re secured.

She barely glances at it. “How’s she going to get in touch?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

She probably doesn’t mean to say it like he’s the dumbest person to ever live.

“She’ll handle that. Like you’ll handle Deacon,” he adds as her face twists up again, and whatever she’s got to say about that stalls out. He shifts against the wall, stretching out one leg to take some pressure off his back.

“So how would you know if something’s gone wrong?”

He rolls the toy in his hands, tracing every tiny bump and chip off by heart, refusing to follow the trail she’s walking down.

“If – ”

“Nothing’s gone wrong.”

He drops the toy in the lunchbox and snaps it closed, stuffing it to the bottom of his bag.

“Okay.”

“Nothing.”

“Okay.” She waves her hands in little circles, the cigarette’s ember making trails in the gloom. “Just…anything you can remember might help. You said you were on the move a lot, and she keeps her head down, so her lines of communication have to be almost non-existent. Right?”

“You’d be surprised. Half the wastelanders down there owe her their lives, and the rest are scared shitle– are terrified of her.

“So she had a lot of contacts.”

“I don’t know!” He clenches his teeth together and counts his breaths for a minute, and Nora, mercifully, holds her tongue. “I wasn’t…I just took orders. Didn’t question where or why. Didn’t care. We had enough to eat and time to sleep and they kept Duncan safe when I went out. I wasn’t about to fuck that up by…seeing anything I shouldn’t, saying anything that’d get us kicked back on our own. Not like it mattered in the end.”

“Mac – ”

“I’m not the guy who thinks. Never have been.”

“Well, that’s bullshit.”

“Yeah, sure – hasn’t this plan worked out great? Got more allies keeping you in their crosshairs if you don’t hand them the Commonwealth on a platter and, and me stuck in with those Steel assholes and…shit.”

“I’ve got some answers, at least.”

“Well that’s great. Answers. That and 15 caps will get you a haircut. And meanwhile Deacon’ll make sure I never see Duncan again, if he hasn’t already.”

“I told you, I’ll handle him. And there’s no reason he’d – ”

“Doesn’t matter. If it’s not him, it’s someone else. Something else. And you keep saying you’re not gonna make it back either. So I’ll, what? Hang around Sanctuary until they kick me out? Go back to D.C. and find that vault? It’d just be Anacostia Station all over again, nothing and no sign even he was ever there. Never even know what the hell happened to him. Or you.”

He tries to clench the hand on his knee, barely feeling his fingernails through the thick underarmor, imagining those fingers slipping right off the bolt-action on his rifle.

Maybe the medicine never made it to her. Independent caravans get hit by raiders and paladins every day down there. Or they ran low on caps and sold off the medicine on the road. Or she sent Butch out for supplies that week, and he was too busy chasing the local talent in Dot’s to bother checking for messages. Or the medicine was too old, or cracked on the way, or made him worse, or the cryo unit broke down before they got it, or…

Fuck. There’s a hundred ways this ends. Or already ended, and he’s got no clue. Just waiting, staring south like a fool.

His nails bite into the heel of his hand. There’s a cigarette burning near his boot and the bare knee next to his is skinned and his fingers curl up tight only because her hand’s wrapped around his. It doesn’t take a master tracker to follow her path across the floor between them, ending with her head on his shoulder.

He reaches to pick up the cigarette automatically, taking a shaky drag and pulling her close again with his weak arm. He offers the cigarette to her, but she waves it away.

She’s warm against him, stretching Deacon’s teeshirt to fold her legs inside, and quiet, and it’s almost enough.

She raises her head at the sound of footsteps, whispering “Dammit, Deacon,” but they’re heavy boots and coming from the HQ.

“Y’all decent?”

Tinker Tom steps inside the cage without waiting for an answer, one hand tracing the power wires in the wall above them to the generator. He jerks his head at the open gate.

“You did that?”

“It was like that when we got here,” Nora tells him.

“Uh huh. And the reason you got no pants on?”

“I…came in here to change.”

“Uh huh.”

“And took a smoke break.”

“Uh huh.” He saunters to the generator and wiggles the fusion core. “The contact’s corroded. Has to be set in juuuuust right. Connection breaks easy, like when some fool bumps the gennie.”

“Is that so.”

“Yep.” He picks up MacCready’s hat from the floor and slaps it against his thigh to knock off the dust before handing it to him. “Deacon’s clean. None of his fluids turned green no matter what I did to them.”

_So we’re never eating in HQ again. Ever._

“Good to know.”

“Yeah. ‘Course, he could still be working for Them. So, keep your eyes open out there.”

“I can do that.”

_At least Tom’ll approve when I kill the bastard, so long as he thinks a flying saucer was involved._

“I bet you can.” He jiggles the core again and goes to the computer, re-setting the security lock with delicate clacks. “Careful when you go – this’ll lock shut behind you.”

“Okay,” Nora replies.

“So take all your shit. I’m not coming back to let you in again.”

“Will do.”

“There’s a room outside, second floor. Mattress. Couple of candles. Door that locks.” Tom waves over his shoulder as he turns back toward HQ. “Don’t be goddamn animals.”

“Y’know, I miss the days everyone in the Commonwealth was either trying to kill me or kissing my ass,” Nora muses, at least a full minute after his heavy treads have faded down the long hallway. “Life was simpler.”

“I never kissed your ass,” he grumbles, trying to rub some of the heat out of his bruised, blazing cheeks.

“You could stand to.”

“Yeah, hold your breath.”

He flicks the cigarette butt into the hallway.

“I’m not leaving you worse off than I found you,” she tells him softly.

“So we’re still talking about this?”

“If I don’t come back…for any reason…my stuff, the house, that’s all yours. No one’s kicking you out.”

“I don’t need you to set me up. I can take care of myself whether you hang around or not.” He flexes his weak fingers, hoping that’s still true. “I just need you.”

She shivers and stretches to catch her pack’s strap with her foot, dragging it over to them. “Shaun, when he was in Diamond City…from what Deacon saw, he’s, well, surprisingly well adjusted.”

“Really? The big bad Institute’s…” He pauses and pictures Duncan, ten years old and four states away, calling his friends Mom and Dad, and finishes lamely, “…treating him like a pet?”

“Maybe,” she shrugs, standing and shaking out Deacon’s jeans with a harsh snap.

“That’s good. Right?”

“Well, it’s better than keeping him in a cell…or a series of small jars.”

“Nora,” he breathes, shocked.

“Like Dez said, compartmentalisation: it keeps us alive. Or at least wanting to live.”

He shakes his head, wishing it’d dislodge the image of all those jars. “So you want me to just lock this all down again?”

“Not everything’s about you.” She leans back on the generator to wriggle one leg into the jeans, not meeting his eyes. “I’m saying, of course it’s good Shaun’s alive, healthy…maybe even happy. If he’s got a good life down there…”

She lets it hang there until he finishes for her. “You’re staying with him.”

“Plan A is still to get him out of that horror factory and burn it to the ground. Or further underground. Like you said, our place is all set up for him.” She pushes her foot through with a vicious thrust and continues softly. “In a settlement attacked every other day by Gunners, raiders, super mutants…bloatflies…”

“Damn those bloatflies,” he echoes, staring at his boot.

“Barely enough food to go around. Bad water in the creek out back.”

“And not a custom-built slave in sight.”

She swallows and concentrates on forcing her other leg into the jeans, replying after a moment. “Aside from Codsworth.”

“…right.”

“He was the basic factory model, of course. We weren’t well off enough to spring for a custom personality module like most of the neighbors.” She jumps on her toes, breasts bouncing, working the waistband over her hips. It’d be cute in the middle of any other conversation. “Not like any of those bots survived, though, so…more fool them.”

“Fine, Nor, you win. It’s all the same.”

She stills, thumbs hooked in the belt loops, definitely counting to ten before she speaks. “So, before I go…we’ll find Duncan.”

“We’ll…what?”

He scrambles to his feet but she sidles out of reach, flicking on her pipboy map. “We’ve got friends, and resources, and while I’m here, I’ll damn well use them. So after this, we go pick up Nick, but we head for the Prydwen.”

“We…” He runs that last sentence through his head again and starts at the beginning. “Nick – Nick, who hates me?”

“Nick who finds missing people.”

“Duncan’s not missing.”

“Is he here?”

“No, of course – ”

“And do you know where he is?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then he’s missing.”

“Well, he’s definitely not on the Prydwen.”

She snaps off the map and tugs at the waistband again. “No, but that’s where they keep the vertibirds.”

“The vertibirds.” He rubs between his eyebrows at the headache blooming there. “The ones you nearly bricked a few days ago.”

“You think we’re going to walk south?” She wiggles the jeans the rest of the way up with a smothered curse. “And, yes, I know I’m not exactly Maxson’s golden girl right now, but if I can’t trade the Switchboard for a ‘bird loan, I’ll burn my law degree and enrol in clown college.”

“Okay,” he sighs. “So this was your plan, to ‘get ahead’ of Deacon turning on me?”

“Not all of it,” she mumbles, then continues even more quietly. “It also involves Strong.”

MacCready snorts. “Oh, I can’t wait for this.”

She tugs at the waistband again, trying to make the fasteners at the fly come together. “It’s simple, really. A knight, a synth, and a super mutant walk into every bar in D.C. asking for her. I’m pretty sure she’ll come out of hiding just to hear the punchline.”

He drops his head back against the wall, pinching the bridge of his nose. Nora’s got a point, though. It’d be weird enough that she might send her ghoul out to investigate. Probably from long range, with a missile launcher. “Yeah…no one’d ever guess you’ve been mainlining buffout for the last 24 hours.”

“It’s a work in progress.”

It’s rip-the-u-bend-from-a-cabin-sink-for-a-grappling-hook bonkers, he thinks, and almost wants to laugh. Then again…that plan came close enough to working that they managed to stagger away from the wreckage intact. And it was a _lot_ of wreckage, more than the Gunners have taken in one battle in years.

“We can work on it,” he reluctantly agrees, and she nods but doesn’t look up from her battle with the zipper. He wonders if she’s already down there in her head, raising her son while everyone she loves on the surface is just memories, locked away and fading.

“If I knew, for sure, Duncan was awake and recovering…I’d want to get to him a hundred times faster.”

She doesn’t answer, only growls as the snap she’s finally managed to force together pops open again as she breathes in, and pulls her belt out of the fatigue trousers with impatient tugs.

“This is not a problem I’ve had in two hundred years,” she grumbles softly.

It’s not a problem to him, he doesn’t say. Those jeans leave less to the imagination than her vault suit did. He wonders what the Institute uniform looks like, because of course they’ll have a uniform. If she’ll like it any better.

“Deacon would make a fence post feel portly.” She buckles the belt over the open fly and pulls the teeshirt low. “This looks stupid, doesn’t it?”

“You seen how everyone else is dressed out here?” he points out.

“Hmph.”

She tugs at the bottom of the shirt again.

“You really want Shaun to grow up with slavers?” he asks abruptly.

She picks up the jacket. “You really want to lecture me on ethics?”

But her tone is mild, as if she’s asking whether he wants the dog or rat meat for dinner. Almost like it’s a real question. So he pulls his counterpunch, just a little. “I’ll get Valentine to do it.”

She buries her face in the jacket, groaning. “Please don’t tell Nick. You’ve already got me in enough trouble with him.”

“And I’m telling him when we’re all with Maxson,” he pushes. “Just to see both their heads explode when they have to agree on something.”

“Tom was right,” she grumbles into the leather. “You are a goddamn animal.”

“Learned it all from you.”

“I doubt that.”

But the look she gives him over the jacket collar is troubled, not irritated. At a noise out in the hallway, it falls into the cool blankness that used to bug him so much in the early days. They both move to lean through the gate.

“Probably Tom,” she says after a moment.

“Lots of echoes down here,” he pretends to agree, as her eyes flick to catch his and immediately move away. She walks back to where she dropped the jacket, stocking feet quiet enough that they both catch the faint click of the outer door’s latch. He stretches his ears while she pulls on her boots, but hears nothing aside from the slide of her laces.

“’Atom Cats’?” she reads from the back of the leather jacket before pulling it on. “You think that’s the opposite of a Tunnel Snake?”

“Don’t go starting that again,” he chides and takes her hand, spelling out K-I-L-L-H-I-M.

L-A-T-E-R, she replies, her lips tight.

He shakes his head, but doesn’t argue.

She leans close to him as she fusses with the lay of Sparky’s strap over her pack, whispering, “So…are we ever going to fuck again?”

She’s worn off on him, he realises, mentally jotting down their weaknesses ( _Deacon: Doesn’t like to be touched; Nora: Doesn’t like_ not _to be touched_ ) and decides there’s no reason she should be too comfortable.

“Probably,” he whispers, and flips her jacket collar out where it’s tucked under a strap.

She snorts and ducks her head, too fast for him to catch her expression this time. Her face is already set for the road, distant and tired, when she looks up to catch his quick kiss.

“C’mon. The faster we get this done…”

“The faster we’ll be holed up in the Rex.”

_With Deacon’s head on a spike in front of the door._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long break between chapter updates!
> 
> I'm mucking around on tumblr now @ mustinvestigate.tumblr.com - stop by and...tell me how exactly one tumblrs.


	9. Chapter 9

“I’ll bite your legs off!” Deacon laughs, dodging an armless ghoul’s gaping jaws.

Mac glares at the back of his head and swings his new 10mm over Deacon’s shoulder, pulling the trigger next to his ear. Deacon flinches away from the blast, avoiding the muffled noise of the shot but not a splatter of rotten brain blowback. He shakes his jacket lapels with a disgusted grunt.

“Hey, thanks – that was…super…helpful.”

Mac steps past him and crouches by the overturned bus this pack was nesting in, impatiently jerking his head at me to flank on the other side.

“On it, boss.”

That earns me, well, not a smile, but a quick eyeroll that’s almost as good. A bullet pings off the bus’s exposed undercarriage as I hoist myself into the scant shelter of the upside-down door, while Mac ducks low to pick off the last feral underneath. Through Sparky’s scope, I catch the raider lookout on the nearest bridge fortification and fire a warning shot just over his head, hoping that’ll convince him to abandon the span long enough for us to slip past.

No such luck. He punches one fist over another in a universal gentleman’s gesture and raises his sniper rifle…

…which clatters to the bridge, dusted in a shower of shimmering ash.

Mac whistles his approval as he climbs to join me, squinting through those ugly sunglasses. “I see two more…both retreating.”

“Same.” I blink against the sun’s flare in the scope and rest Sparky on the rusted step, taking off my aviator glasses. “Trade?”

“Sure.” He frowns at my relieved sigh as the darker glasses cut back on the glare. “You want my hat, too?”

“Yes, please.”

“Go, team!” Deacon interrupts cheerfully, leaning against the bus below us. “Five hostiles down without a scratch on either of us.”

Mac clams up, tightening my helmet’s liner straps while I jam his hat down low over my eyes, bobby pins digging into my throbbing skull, and try to ignore the tantalising crinkle of cardboard and foil in my pocket.

“Lamplight, how ‘bout you keep a bead on that mirelurk nest in the river while Winter and me scav these bodies?”

Which means I’ll scav. I’ve yet to catch that big girl’s blouse taking anything from a body, even the bomb-blasted skeletons that smell of nothing worse than dust.

Mac looks at me for confirmation and, at my nod, gingerly hops down from the bus and crosses the broken pavement with light, careful steps. Mirelurk chirrups erupt as his shadow falls on the river below, dying down moments after he crouches behind the river barricade and their little birdie brains forget he ever existed.

“I get the feeling Lamplight’s just not warming up to me.”

Behind Deacon, Mac mimes jamming a gun to his temple, pulling a trigger, and flicking his fingers in an explosion on the other side.

“You don’t say.”

“You think we’ve got incompatible star signs? I bet he’s a Taurus.”

“It's because you're an asshole.”

He staggers, clutching his chest, then laughs.

“I promised to be honest, not kind.”

“Yeah, but so’s he. And so’re you. We should be teaming up like the alternate-universe Unstoppables.”

“You couldn't pull off a goatee.” The waistband of his jeans digs hard into my aching back as I jump down to the pavement next to him. Walking in this godforsaken sun has stretched the old denim enough to finally get the zipper up, but that button’s holding on by a prayer. “Anyway, I missed the issue where Manta Man used his cuttlefish-camouflage to peep on Shroud and the Mistress of Mystery.”

“Please tell me someone made a Tijuana bible of that,” Deacon grins. “Or I’ll have to learn to draw.”

A snort sneaks out of my nose before I can stop it, remembering _The Happy Homemaker Meets The Fuller Brush Man_ – a wedding gift from good ol’ Jules and Ted that I unfortunately opened in front of my new in-laws. “Of course those survived the apocalypse.”

“Quality literature’s timeless.”

The button pops open again as I crouch next to the nearest feral. “Son of a bitch.”

“You hurt?” His grin vanishes like an unattended bottlecap near Mac.

“Just my pride.” I tug the jacket lower and check pockets, holding my breath as rotten fabric comes apart in my fingers. “This wasteland diet plan isn’t quite as miraculous as _Housewife’s Choice_ promised. But then they never were.”

“You want to borrow something else?” he asks, sliding down to sit against the bus. “I’ve got a wardrobe of choices, if you don’t mind a little dirt…and blood…and I think I sat on a mutfruit in the blue suit...you’re definitely wearing the cleanest outfit.”

_And your favorite_ , I think. _Don’t make me kill you._

He’s almost certainly going to make me kill him.

“It’s fine.”

There’s not much to find on the ferals, just the usual sad little totems: keyrings, two subway tokens, an empty compact, a baby’s pacifier. Even with Deacon only supervising, it barely takes a minute to pile these in the bus’s empty wheel well. His shoes tap together, soundlessly, perfectly timed to juuuuuuust touch and pull away again and again and again, and it reminds me somehow of Nate, of his fingers playfully walking up my arm as I yanked him into the kitchen by his tie and hissed that he must quit red-baiting Aziz or winking at Estelle to wind Tony up and if I heard one more goddamn Vegas showgirl joke, forget the couch, he could sleep on the balcony.

Deacon shifts to cross his legs, tucking those restless feet under his knees. He picks up one of the keyrings and twirls it on his thumb. The fob flashes, catching the afternoon sun: two socks, now silver, their red paint long worn away. The rest of the loot goes into my bag while the silence between us stretches. He’s finally the one who breaks it.

“You were right, when you said making friends isn’t exactly in my wheelhouse.”

“No shit.”

He jumps a little at the flat curse but soldiers on, pushing a folded paper into my hands. “I want you to have that – it’s my recall code.”

“Recall code?” It’s an honest-to-god envelope. Unscorched paper is a rare enough find, but an envelope...this is the first I’ve seen outside the vault. It’s even sealed, although a quick sniff reveals the harsh scent of wonderglue, not the sweet-dust smell of a stationary cupboard I hadn’t even realised I missed. “So, you’re a synth?”

“One of the first Gen-3’s to escape,” he nods. Nods a little too hard, maybe. “And one of the first guinea pigs for the ol’ cranial reboot.”

“Huh.”

He rubs his forehead. “It was a bit of a botch job. I don’t like to talk about it.”

“Okay.”

“Most synths have those fun fake memories: a happy home, a family…”

“Murdered in front of them, ideally.” It’s not fair, probably, to needle him about my stolen memories. “Maybe raiders. Maybe a robbery. Just so long as it’s motivating.”

He tilts his head in acknowledgement. “Right, fun times! Sure, you think I’m crazy envying that, but having nothing at all to fall back on? It does something to you. Makes it hard to connect.”

I buckle the bag closed and stand over him to settle it on my shoulders, watching his face. He leans back to let me take a good long look, even though the sun’s behind me and has to be blinding him.

It does make a kind of sense. If he’d been left entirely blank, unsocialised by experience or programming, and scavenged together a personality based on pre-war magazines and the Railroad kooks around him...even his odd compulsions, changing clothes and rearranging his pack every time we pause, could be leftover glitches in the system.

“What’d they design you for? You don’t have a courser’s build or a servant’s humility. Does the Institute have a DMV they need staffed?”

“I just don’t know.” He looks over his shoulder at the distant patter of gunfire. “You heard Glory.”

“And...so did you, it sounds like. Have I ever had a private conversation?”

“Only the boring ones.” A flash of uncomfortable smile...an expression I haven’t seen on him before. “The memory implants didn’t stick, but the attempt did overwrite whatever knowledge I managed to bring out of the Institute. If you get desperate, though...there’s a chance that us early models weren’t built with the same security features. Maybe, if we wipe all the memories I’ve built up out here, whatever’s underneath can give you some answers.”

I turn the envelope over, trace the bumpy line of sealant.

“But it won’t be me anymore,” he continues hurriedly, lowering his voice as Mac pushes away from the river barrier to join us, probably wondering what’s taking so long. “So, you know, I’d just feel better if you don’t even look at it until – ”

I tear open the envelope and read from the scrap inside: “You can’t trust everyone.”

Deacon’s lips tighten, but otherwise the only movement on his face is my reflection in his glasses.

Mac looks between us before taking the paper and reading slowly: “You can – can’t – trust everyone?”

“Wow.” Deacon pushes the wig back to scratch his forehead underneath. “Just…wow.”

“It’s not bad advice, considering the source,” I tell Mac.

He shakes his head and crumples the note. “What d’you think: Goodneighbor, or should we push on to Diamond City?”

“You mind a swim?”

“Always.”

I huff a little laugh at that as Mac takes my hand and turns us east, ignoring Deacon’s sharp, “Guys?”

“I know, but if we go around the peninsula, it’ll take all night to reach the airport.” Which is time I could use, in fact, to figure out a few small holes in my plan, like who the hell will fly this vertibird that Maxson will certainly be thrilled to loan me, and how we’ll shake them in D.C. without raising suspicions any higher than transporting a synth _and_ a super mutant will already lift them.

Or I could junk the whole plan and go back to the drawing board. Mac might’ve had a point about plotting any major strategies while hyped up on buffout.

“That’s enough.” Deacon steps in front of me, then immediately backs off when Mac pushes in between us with his new gun raised. He shrugs the hunting rifle off his shoulder, shakes a switchblade out of his sleeve, and slowly places both of them on the ground. “See? Truce, okay? We’re all friends here. We just need to talk.”

He lifts his hands as I raise Sparky, but it’s only to hand it to Mac. “Keep an eye out.”

Mac’s scowl deepens, but he trades weapons with me and climbs back onto the bus, watching the bridge as I crouch in the scant cover next to it, shuffling back out of reach when Deacon joins me. The silenced 10mm rests on my knee, not quite pointed at him, but he only strips off his filthy jacket and loosens his tie, taking new clothes from his bag like it’s any other rest stop.

“You can’t pull out now,” he says quietly.

“You’re going to stop me?” I keep my own tone almost as low and steady.

“You need us as much as we need you. Tom’s the only non-moleperson in the Commonwealth with the experience to use whatever Institute transport tech you can scrape up.” He taps on the bus until Mac shifts to glare over the side at him. “Bones might have a chance, too, but we both know she’s a girl who plays hard to get – what we don’t know is how much of a window we have left to get Winter on the inside.”

Mac looks at me, scowl melting into tight-lipped anxiety, and nods. His angry vault lady, then – didn’t he say she was a doctor, or at least what passes for one these days?

“But you can reach her?” I ask.

“Not quickly. Definitely no faster than you can track down Virgil and get back to us.”

Mac shifts back on the bus, out of our sight. There’s three fruitless clicks of a lighter and a muffled _god…darn it_ before a sharp inhale and drift of smoke above us. Deacon pulls his shirt over his head and stuffs it and his wig into the pack, quickly zipping a caravan guard’s uniform jacket and clapping a flatcap on his bare skull.

“We’re not the Brotherhood – or your Minutemen, for that matter.”

“So you’ve said.”

“And I’ll stop saying it when – ” He takes off his glasses to dig the heels of his palms into his eyes. “You’re almost more trouble than you’re worth, you know?”

“My husband would’ve agreed,” I return tartly, shifting the pistol’s barrel closer to him. Deacon peeks between his wrists, following the movement. His pale eyes are bloodshot now, rimmed with reddened wrinkles, and in half a heartbeat flit from the gun to my face and back, to the bridge ahead of us, to the gun again, then hide again behind his hands. He really does remind me of a squirrel, but not the fluffy little rascals that used to razz our puppy from the safety of the picket fence. More the scrawny, toothy, all-but-invisible little monsters out in the woods now, the ones that almost inevitably end their lives in a Sanctuary stew pot.

“I doubt that,” he replies, too softly for Mac to hear, and pushes his sunglasses back up his nose. He taps on the bus again. “I sent word to Bones when you got here…asked why the hell one of her people was running with the Gunners.”

Mac peeks over, casually tapping ash onto Deacon’s hat.

“She wrote back to stay out of your way. That you were on a mission. And by then you’d changed employers.” He nods at me. “Which made me think she’d sent you north to poach our girl before I could get her on board, given her fondness for vaulties.”

“’Your’ girl?” I ask sharply, and he grins, and…he’s trying to piss me off again. Or Mac, maybe…or both of us.

_What’s he hustling us past?_

So I grin back, the warm, syrupy, you-got-me-there-big-boy smile perfected on Major Pain. “I suppose I am your girl, at that.”

His face freezes, head tilting like a broken Gen-2 for just a heartbeat.

_Score_.

“What?” Mac growls, face a mask of irritated confusion, but the way his eyes flick between us, I think he knows…I hope…well, he’s seen me pull this routine on Maxson, anyway.

“Bones has…” Deacon scratches his chin, “… _firm_ opinions on her team’s autonomy. So you’re safe, at least, if you two go off the rails. But our girl, here…”

He shrugs expressively.

Mac flicks his half-smoked butt off Deacon’s shoulder. “Anything happens to Nora, my new Steel brothers’ll get all the intel they need to wipe out HQ and every last synth-loving idiot left in the Commonwealth.”

“And right after that,” Deacon cheerfully returns, “a hot tip on their favorite defector and coordinates to the only cryo-vault in D.C.”

“Son of a bitch,” I sigh over Mac’s sharp breath. “Two hundred years of…all this…and men still think ‘mutually assured destruction’ is a viable strategy.”

“I’d rather be friends,” Deacon insists.

“Friends,” Mac scoffs, rolling off the bus to land between us.

Deacon shuffles to the side, glaring intently at me around Sparky’s barrel. “Yeah, friends. I showed you how we work, exactly how much I’ve learned about you and how I did it. And the Switchboard – I showed you why we have to work this way. My cards have been right here on the table, and all I’ve asked is that you be honest with me, too.”

“Honest?” Mac echoes scornfully.

“You did just try to convince me you’re a synth.”

“And what makes you think I’m not?” Deacon shoots back. “Should I have trusted you with my real recall code?” He shakes his head, his voice softening. “So you failed my test – fine. I still...you and me, the resources behind us – if we work together, the Institute doesn’t have a prayer. I’m willing to put all this behind us if you are.”

“We’re not,” Mac replies quickly.

“I still trust you,” Deacon talks past him.

“Both of you…” I push Mac’s hat back and dig in my cropped hair, shaking out bobby pins before they drill into my brain. “Kindly shut up.”

“Nor…”

“Mac, please.”

“Just meet this guy,” Deacon breaks in. “He’s fresh out the Institute. Just listen to him…hear how afraid he’ll be to speak at all, even to look you in the eye. See for yourself what the Institute does to these people.”

“Deacon, don’t – ”

“And if you still want out after that, fine. I’ll tell Dez I’ve sent you both on deep cover. No one’ll bother you.” He raises three fingers. “Honest injun.”

“Deacon, you,” I start again, then silently count to ten. “You need to check your sources more carefully. Even my granddad would’ve considered ‘honest injun’ too déclassé for polite company. And he called my mother ‘Milty’s little colored wife’ until the day he died...which wasn’t by her service revolver, somehow.”

Mac opens his mouth to almost certainly ask which color, while Deacon tries again. “Honest...cowboy?”

“Just stop.”

“You don’t actually believe any of this?”

I cram his hat down over my curls, wishing it had a chin strap like my helmet to keep from springing back up. “Did the old joke about the happy cynic survive the war?”

“I know that one!” Deacon eagerly answers first. “He goes through life either proved right or – ”

“Or shot in the head when he won’t quit flapping his gums,” Mac growls.

“Mac…”

“Good point.” Deacon picks up his weapons and stands. “Enough talk. I’ll scout ahead. Meet me across the bridge. You know, whenever you’re ready.”

He crosses the empty street in three long strides and slips behind the wreckage of a three-car pile-up. Mac follows, leaning against the river barricade and raising Sparky.

I settle next to him and clear my throat.

“Just keeping an eye on him,” he mutters.

“Fine, as long as you don’t shoot him yet.”

“No promises.”

We watch the flickers of motion as Deacon crosses the bridge – a shadow falling between girders, the flash of sunglasses peeking through a rusted expansion joint – and listen to the brief patter of gunfire as he picks off a raider who’s taken advantage of our delay to creep back into the fortifications. Mac peers through the scope with a faint grimace – _rest in peace, Billy, whoever you were_ – and hisses in pain as the last raider’s head falls in a shower of glowing ash.

“Why the fu...hmm. Why’s a laser weapon got recoil, anyway? Makes no sense.”

“It’s the heat dump. That forces a small blast of – ”

He rests Sparky’s barrel on the railing and rubs his shoulder. “What d’you call those questions you don’t actually want an answer to?”

“Rhetorical.”

“Yeah, that.”

“Okay.” I can’t resist pointing at Sparky’s vent. “It’s that bit. The hot part.”

His eyebrows push together in a halfhearted glare, but those lips want to smile. “I lost him, anyway. Probably has that stealth boy on again.”

It’s unlikely, not when there’s a dry strip of bank near a break in the wall, itself a moment’s dash to a high-grassed alleyway, but Mac’s probably happier assuming the other man could only give him the slip by cheating. “Probably.”

“We should move while it’s clear,” Mac suggests, setting off for the bridge. He drops his bag uphill of the spreading blood around the first body, checking both banks again before turning his attention to its pockets. “Since we’re hitting Bunker Hill, you want me to pick these clean?”

Not like we need the caps anymore, but… “Good idea.”

“I’m full of ‘em.” He unloads a pipe pistol and drops it in his bag. “We are killing him. Right?”

“You’re getting as bad as Preston and his damn castle.”

“Preston’s a heck of a lot more patient than me.”

“No argument here.”

I take the pile of ash, turning my back on Mac’s slow turn and speculative, sour look. Whatever clothes the raider wore are toast, but he dropped a set of spiked knuckles and two clips of .308 Mac can use…could have used if his rifle was still in one piece. I reach to pick up the sniper rifle and catch a gust of wind that flings glowing ash into my face.

There’s a very, very faint snort behind me, but I don’t turn to look.

There’s human-ash coating my sunglasses and I tell myself not to lick my lips, then immediately lick my lips and spit into the river, gagging. Those mirelurks dog-paddle below us, their agitated _chick chick chick_ s overlapping as they jostle around the body, the sparkling drift of ash sticking to their carapaces. It shimmers on my fingers, too, working deeper into the whorls of my fingerprints rather than rub off.

My nights-out eyeshadow, a payday splash at the Saks near the old army gals’ apartment, was almost the exact same silvery blue.

Mac coughs until I look over, holding up a set of handcuffs before pocketing them. “There’s keys here.”

“Oh.” That talk was weeks ago, our last layover in Sanctuary, and he’d hemmed and hawed and blushed and I’d already given up on even a little light bondage as too close to “raider stuff” when he stammered, _I’d need keys,_ _I can’t pick my way out of them like you can_ , and oh…okay. That’d work for me, too. “Good. You think maybe – ”

“How’s your head?” he asks quickly, eyes darting around the empty bridge, and Deacon’s chances of surviving the day slip another notch, if killing him’s what it'll take to ever see my boyfriend naked again, let alone cuffed to our headboard.

“Killing me,” I admit. “Mentats don’t last like they used to.”

“I’ve still got that addictol.”

“No, I’m fine. Just coming down from two different performance enhancers…it’s my own fault.”

“We’ve got more of both,” he offers reluctantly.

“No,” I tell him, dragging loose curls behind my ears and pulling the hat brim lower. “I’ll be fine after a nap.”

He rubs the back of his neck, pauses, then gropes inside the collar of the undersuit. “Da–dang it. I’ve lost those stupid dogtags.”

I look back the way we’ve come, but there’s no chance of picking out two tiny bits of steel in all the detritus on the bridge.

“You’d have heard it if the chain broke, when they hit the street,” I assure him, not believing it myself.

“Yeah,” he nods, brows scrunching in thought. “Maybe I took them off to sleep and forgot. They’re probably on the mattress back in HQ.”

“Probably. And even if someone out here found them…”

“They’d sell ‘em for scrap,” he says firmly, checking the path ahead through Sparky’s scope before handing him back to me, not quite meeting my eyes. “Not like most people could even read the name on them.”

There’s no sign of Deacon on the other side, and Mac’s jaw tightens until I touch his elbow and point to a roof across the way, where Deacon moves his head, catching sunlight on his sunglasses.

He jumps to the next building and swings down its drainpipe. “We’re clear to come in the east gate, but there’s a squad of Gen-1s battling those Constitution robots not far past that – probably looking for our friend. Let’s pick up the pace.”

Mac nods, falling in behind me as Deacon sets off at a jog, not even attempting a stealthy approach. I’m pretty sure he’s lining up practice shots at the back of Deacon’s head, from the whispered _blam...blam...blam_ s behind me, but when I look back, he’s scanning the buildings ahead like it’s just us on a routine run.

Mac looks up at the obelisk as we pass through the gates, then glares at Deacon. He barely notices, cutting around the main market entrance.

“I’d rather not land on Keller’s radar,” he whispers.

“Likewise.” Every time that woman claps eyes on me she remembers another raider gang that’s giving her trouble. And since I’ve already strong-armed a ‘Hill discount barely a hair over wholesale, she’s got nothing left to trade but signing on under the blue flag – though it’ll take far more time than I’ve got to make her see that she’s no longer any more independent than Abernathy Farm. That’s a fight for a future Nora, a less hungover Nora, to wage. “Mac, you mind trading for us?”

“Me? Okay, sure. I got this.” He takes my bag and stands a little taller, shoulders thrown back, approaching Deb’s stall with more solemnity than a green altar boy at Easter Eucharist.

Deacon coughs up his sleeve, smirking.

“What?”

He gives me an innocent look over his shoulder, gesturing to follow him past the brahmin enclosure. “What, what?”

“Just get the smart-ass comment off your chest.”

“I’ve got nothing.”

“Uh huh.”

“Really!” He peeks between two slats and ducks as a shadow moves behind them, whispering, “We’re all friends now. That’s settled.”

I crouch in the shade next to him, whispering back, “I never agreed to your truce.”

“You followed,” he shrugs. “You’re here. Come on.”

He jumps up to the market’s rear walkway and eels through a gap in the dividing wall to sit behind Stockton’s counter. I count myself fortunate there’s no one to witness the three attempts I need to pull myself up after him. The old man barely shifts on his stool, moving his feet to make room for Deacon’s narrow ass, and doesn’t turn his head when I lean on the wall behind him.

“So, uh, any chance there’s a Geiger-counter repairman in the area? Mine needs a tune-up.”

Deacon buries his face in his hands. I sniffle and rub my nose to hide a grin that’s at least half-sneer.

Stockton sighs. “You’re the new girl? I’d have thought your dance card was already full.”

“You know me – I don't go home until the band does, and the Commonwealth’s still blowing.”

There’s a new stall set up next to Deb’s, a girl in Diamond City security armor absently thumping the freshly painted “SUNDRIES” sign with a nail-tipped bat. The kid behind the register, a little older and swimming in a patched pantsuit my mother-in-law would have paired with a very dry martini, tugs at her elbow and points at me, whispering behind her hand.

“Well, I’m glad you’re on board. We could certainly use a...” Stockton hesitates. “A new dance instructor with your…Hollywood connections.”

“’Hollywood’ connections?” If Stockton asks about Vince Natalie’s starlet, I’m burning this entire market to the ground.

“Boom! Boom!” Cricket yells at Mac across her stall. He leans under her swinging arm to fish through a box of loose ammo, nodding along to the rhythm of her explosions.

“Some of your other friends…the ones from old California…hit Cricket’s caravan outside the Commons,” Stockton tells me quietly. “Confiscated half her stock.”

_Just what I need._ “They give her a receipt?”

“Yes, actually,” Stockton nods, fishing the slip from his jacket pocket. “Apparently, I can redeem it for ‘reasonable protection, not including air support, provided at 48-hours’ notice, subject to availability’ **.** ”

I groan and skim the list. Fusion cells – and two fusion cores, _dammit_ – three laser rifles, a gamma gun, plasma cells…easily a thousand caps’ trade lost in the “inspection”. And it stinks of Teagan; our born caviller Maxson would never use a slippery word like “reasonable”, and he’d certainly not miss a chance to deploy his beloved ‘birds to the locals’ gaping wonderment.

“I doubt I can pry the weapons or ammo back out of the quartermaster’s grip, and forget caps…but I could probably cut a deal with the Prydwen’s medical team for a shipment of high-grade stimpacks and med-x.”

Stockton nods. “Weathers won’t be happy, but he and Cricket can work out a temporary territory split until she’s resupplied.”

Deacon pointedly taps his wrist.

“You know, it’d go a long way toward preventing future ‘inspections’ if I could tell Maxson Bunker Hill’s under the Minuteman flag.”

“That’s a big ask,” Stockton purses his lips, then nods. “I’ll talk to Keller.”

Deacon taps harder.

Across the market, Mac moves on to the new stall, picking up a mug. The girl in the pantsuit grabs his sleeve, leaning close to whisper urgently in his ear.

“Well,” Stockton harrumphs. “On to business, then. All you need to know is that this is the first stop for all our new packages. So maintaining proper security here and – ”

“Our mutual doctor friend said you’ve got more raider problems,” I interrupt and pop open my pipboy map, pointing at the nearby coast and then the Commons. “And incoming complications here and here, but if we clear you a path quickly, you should be able to move out your stock ahead of them.”

Stockton glances around the market and leans close, our foreheads nearly touching as he points out a short route on the map toward an old church – the Episcopalian congregation, I think, that raised such a stink when the city circumvented preservation regulations by simply building the new highway over instead of through it. “They’re stragglers from Zeller’s gang, dug into our drop-off point here. When you’ve cleared them, come back and – ”

“There’s no time for that,” Deacon tells him. “You’ve got a patrol knocking on your back door already. High Rise’s around, right? He can escort. Send them on as soon as it’s dark enough to see the lamp.”

Mac looks across the market at me, his mouth twisting thoughtfully, before handing them a bag of caps far too large for the pack of fancy lads and extra-large bottle he carries away.

“And if the path’s not clear?”

“It will be.”

“Killing raiders is kind of my business.” I add, turning as Mac hands me my pack. “Our business.”

“I’ll trust you,” Stockton says doubtfully.

“We set?”

“Medkit’s restocked,” Mac tells me, “but no ammo for Sparky.”

“So I heard. How many fusion cells have I got?” I flip open the lunchbox to check stimpaks and count shotgun shells by feel, rooting down to the bottom of the bag in futile hope there’s more than a handful left. My heart sinks at the lack of caps keeping them company. “Looks like you cleaned out every shell in the market for Boomer, though.”

He nods and lowers his voice. “Valentine left a mess for you.”

I follow his glance across the market, where the new girls wave nervously. “I guess he found his missing teenagers, at least.”

“It can wait,” Deacon says, scrambling out from under the counter.

“It can,” Mac shrugs, easily swinging over the walkway’s railing after Deacon and dropping to the ground below, politely ignoring my muffled curse as I land badly and jar my back.

“Down here.” Deacon eels behind the bunkhouse and kicks a rotten piece of plywood away from a miniscule gap in the wall.

“Fantastic,” I sigh, watching him slip through like a greased weasel, and take off the jacket to throw over the wall with my pack. Two long scrapes and a shower of rust particles later, I’m on the other side, Mac yanking the plywood back into place after us.

“Ferals in there,” Deacon warns, already rounding a cemetery wall.

We jog to catch up, then sprint past the guttural belches of ghouls waking, and tuck around a corner on the other side. Mac leans carefully around the bricks, whispering back, “I think they’ll settle down in a minute.”

“Save our ammo, then.”

Deacon shifts impatiently, but nods. We could probably outrun the ghouls, but if they’re persistent and relatively smart, they’ll catch up to us at the church.

“What’s the mess?”

Mac checks on the ghouls again before whispering, “They owe a sh…edload of caps back in Diamond City. Valentine promised you’d find work for them.”

_Thanks, Nick_. “What the hell kind of work does he think I’ll have for two teenage girls?”

One of them a merchant’s kid, and the other smart and tough enough to get them through the gauntlet between the Fens and Bunker Hill. Maybe…we’d need someone familiar with the whole Commonwealth, but Stockton’ll owe me one if I can fix Cricket’s loss… It’s just possible I could dump running the provision lines on them, especially if Stockton can get Keller to sign on officially. Maybe. It needs more thought, though, and my to-ponder list isn’t exactly short and lonely.

“You’ll think of something.” He shifts back, grimacing, as Deacon leans across him to check on the ghouls. “Anyway, I put ‘em on retainer for you.”

“You what?”

“It’s clear,” Deacon interrupts, shouldering me ahead of him.

“You ‘put them on retainer’?” I whisper to Mac. “You mean, you gave them money…for nothing?”

“When it’s Valentine asking for a favour, I don’t waste my breath arguing,” he grumbles, following Deacon across the intersection, then peeks back with a look that aims for sour. “Anyway, they’re just kids starting out, blew all their stolen caps buying in with Kessler. Can’t even afford a brahmin.”

“You do surprise me sometimes.” I smile, but he only hunches his shoulders, scowl deepening.

Deacon points to the intersection ahead before I can respond. “Our target’s just past there. How do you want to play this?”

“You’re asking me, boss?”

He chambers a round in his hunting rifle. “Like you said, killing raiders is your business. How can we do this fast? Maybe even fast enough to swing back around and catch the end of an _awesome_ synths-v-robots battle? If it helps, the robots are using a cannon. A cannon!”

“Nick and I dealt with this group before. They’re...special.” I turn to Mac. “You know of any good rooftop blinds with an eyeline on that church up there?”

“Yeah.” He points out a crumbling rowhouse that doesn’t look any more promising than its neighbors. “Up there, sandbags on the north side. Might be a Gunner supply cache if we’re lucky, or Gunners if we’re not.”

“Great. We should take out as many raiders as we can from a distance. Zeller’s initiations went well beyond the usual beat-down and…let’s just say that, while we’re safe from any scratching or biting, injuries will not slow these guys down.”

“So...sniping,” Deacon starts, turning to Mac. “That puts you on deck.”

Mac hesitates, looking at me, and shakes his head. “Shoulder’s not up to it yet. I wouldn’t trust my aim for more than two or three shots.”

“I’ll be up there,” I tell them, squaring my shoulders like I truly believe this is a good plan. “But without more ammo, I’d be happier with some backup down here. You remember that big mutie den in the construction site three blocks west?”

“Yeah, the one even Strong said we should probably go around?”

“That’s the one. Feel like borrowing Boomer and drawing them out?”

“Sure,” he laughs. “What else am I doing today?”

“How ‘bout I take that on...boss?” Deacon suggests, with only a hint of eyebrow waggling, and tells Mac, “No offense, but you’re slower even with two good legs, and I’d rather have Deliverer covering my back than under your corpse.”

“Fine by me.” Mac turns, buckling the helmet’s strap under his chin so Deacon can’t see his face. But there’s no way he can’t see this through Mac’s eyes even without catching the hopeful lift of his brows: dangerous mission, improvised plan, untried team, senior agent volunteering for the riskiest position…

Deacon reaches for Boomer, impatiently snapping his fingers when I hesitate.

“Okay,” I tell them both, turning away from Mac’s wolfish grin too late to pretend I didn't see it, didn't approve. My forehead and cheeks prickle, faintly chilled, certainly gone ashen as I coldly picture the splayed body, Desdemona’s expression as I report: _It was my plan. I screwed up. He saved us both._

Mac points past me to a tumble of construction barricades between the church and mutant fort. “I’ll set up there.”

“Great,” Deacon says, barely looking before jogging toward the construction site.

“Shit.” I shove my pack with our medical supplies at Mac and scramble up the broken wall to the second floor, jumping to the next building as stealthily as I can manage.

Which is not very; someone patrolling up the street calls out as I roll across the broken floorboards, “What the fuck was that?”

My climb to the roof is quieter, enough that the raiders laugh, one taunting, “Ma always said the jet will make ya jittery!”

“Yeah, yeah, gimme your stash, then.”

“What’s that?”

_That_ is the beep of an armed mini-nuke, coming right toward us...goddammit. I reverse direction so sharply my knee pops like a bang snap and clamber back to the scant shelter of the collapsed roof, hoping the ceramic tiles will block some of the radiation since Mac’s got all my rad-x. Which he damn well better be taking right now, and almost certainly isn’t.

“Look out!”

“Shit!”

And Deacon laughs, his boots pounding the church floorboards below. I peek around for just a moment to watch the raiders boiling out the front door, Mac curling up tight behind the concrete barriers of his blind as the mutant passes, green muscle slamming into the wall of fleeing human flesh, then duck back behind shelter, screwing my eyes closed as the mini-nuke blows and throws the roofline around me into red relief through my eyelids.

I’m up again as soon as I dare, running back to the edge as my pipboy tick-tick-ticks out a beat too fast for any dance but the jitterbug, scanning for movement through the smoke. Mac’s still low, Deliverer in both hands, perfectly still as a mutant hound savages one of the remaining raiders only a couple yards away from him.

He raises the gun – I follow the movement toward the church as Deacon runs backward, firing behind him, out the front door – then, with a glance up at my hiding spot, Mac changes target to the raider behind Deacon, grabbing the other man’s shirt as he passes and yanking him over the barricade to safety.

Right.

Good.

Deacon rolls hard into the brick wall below me and stops the rebound with a casual grab at an outcropping behind his head he can’t possibly see. His feet are under him and Boomer’s in the hand that should be flailing for balance and as he throws himself into cover next to Mac, he looks up where I’m hiding.

And _grins_.

The bastard.

It’s only when he turns away that I hear my own rusty chuckle, feel my lips grinning back at him.

There’s mostly muties left as the smoke clears, with their thick, lead-resistant hides; Sparky’s time to shine. Mac plinks bullets into them, the small calibres like polite taps on the shoulder that turn them around to catch laser shots in the soft parts of their faces. They scream, in rage and threats but also to each other for help, and they sound so much like Strong and really, there’s only raider camps around here, no settlements they threaten, and…

...yeah, Operation Angry Meat Shields is not a strategy I’ll use again. Not with muties who aren't hurting settlers, anyway.

Mac throws me a bag of radaway when I reach the street, a curl of tubing in his teeth as he sets the big transfusion needle in his arm without a flinch. “See? I’m being good.”

“So I saw.”

He glances at me from under the brim of my helmet, flopping the bag onto his shoulder to drip down and helping me hook mine into my pipboy’s intake. He flicks it away from the home screen to check the geiger readout. “This wind should have the area down to safe levels soon enough.”

“Take a rad-x anyway.”

“Yes, _Mom_.”

I pop one myself with a sharp look that only makes him smirk, splitting a bottle of water as Deacon returns from scoping out the carnage, propping Boomer on a pew. He shakes his head when I hold out the bottle, gesturing for us to follow him into the church.

“All quiet, boss.”

“I’ve got rad-x – take one.”

He shakes his head again and hoists himself up on the high windowsill next to a large oil lamp, leaving a smear of red on the wall. There’s too much blood, green and red, splattering his clothes to tell if he’s been hit.

“Are you hurt?”

“Only here. Those savages really need to learn that words can wound.” He taps his chest and flicks open a lighter, lighting the wick and a cigarette in the same motion, then shakes out an old handkerchief and ties it tightly around his thigh, just over a hole above the knee. “Bullets, too, but they’re pretty well versed there.”

“Need a stim? Or radaway? We’re stocked up.”

“Nah.” He lifts the cigarettes – not to me, for once, but at Mac. “Want one?”

After a moment, Mac nods and raises his good hand to catch the pack, and then the lighter, tapping a cigarette to his lips and lighting it one-handed with surprising ease. He puts both in his own pocket rather than throwing them back.

“High Rise’ll be here in a couple hours at most,” Deacon tells me, ignoring the theft. “Carrington can patch me up after that. Save your supplies.”

Mac drifts toward the back of the church, nudging bodies with his boot.

“Check behind the altar,” Deacon calls. “There’s a hiding space under the transept.”

“Don’t you mean the bema?” I correct automatically.

“Altar girl?” he grins, because of course he knows the correct terminology for every architectural feature of a church. And knew that I’d know.

“Six years.”

“That’s a lot of stolen chugs of communion wine,” he laughs, then whispers: “You gave me up.”

“You wanted me to.”

He smirks. “That does make it easier to forgive you. You want to pop in that confessional over there and make it official?”

I push Mac’s hat back on my ears, futilely tug at a blood-matted curl that’s stuck to my scalp, and finally admit to both of us: “You win. You can call the shots here. I won’t fight you anymore.”

“So we’re friends?”

“Sure, Deacon.”

“Sure, what?”

“Don’t push it, amigo.”

Deacon leans back against the last intact pane with a satisfied hum. “Was that so hard?”

I unhook the empty rad-away bag without a word and join Mac rolling bodies, dumping them naked on the pile outside. He whistles at the scars on some of them, so much missing skin and crisscrossing burns that they could be mistaken for ghouls.

“This kinda feels like a mercy job.”

“You should’ve seen their home base.” I shiver and blink, trying not to remember. “Nick said he was jealous of my ability to vomit – and he had a lot to envy that afternoon.”

Mac rubs my shoulder. “There’s a few hours until sundown. Why don’t you get some sleep?”

“Maybe,” I hedge, looking back at Deacon. He’s leaning on the windowpane, seemingly engrossed in the empty street.

“I’m being good,” he grumbles again, pulling his rolled blanket from his bag and dropping it on a pew. His baseball comes with it, bouncing along the wooden bench until I catch it.

“It’s not you that worries me.”

The stiff stitches and cracked leather give under my fingers, resisting my squeeze with a return pressure that’s strangely reassuring. Mac raises a cupped hand for me to throw it to him, mouth softening into a slight, teasing smile when I throw so gently a toddler wouldn’t miss it. “C’mon, my arm won't fall off.”

I climb over a shattered pew to get some distance and catch his return throw, tossing it underhanded.

He steps back to the opposite wall and throws it back to me hard, teasing, “You throw like a girl.”

“Oh, really?” I give him a taste of Pop’s fastball, earning a choked-off _son of a…_ when it slams into his palm and bounces right back out, and giggle at his glare. “Sorry.”

Deacon raises his hands for the ball, which Mac, of course, ignores. “Liar, liar…you told me you lettered in Russian roulette, not baseball.”

“You what?” Mac asks, trying to replicate my fastball. It goes high, bouncing off the slats behind me.

“I was an ok shortstop. Never did make varsity, though,” I admit, throwing the ball back to Mac a little more gently. “My father was the Bambino in the family.”

“He…put that curse on Diamond City?”

“He played a couple of seasons in the minors.” I pause in case he needs the term explained. Of course he doesn’t. “Came close to breaking the local home run record.”

“Why’d he quit? Tore off his rotator cuff? Refused to throw a game and had to go on the run from the mob?”

“You’ve watched too many holos,” I snort. “He wanted to get married, and his dad decided to retire. So…”

“So he did throw the big game, hoping to buy that dame a rock so big it’d roll right over her mother’s objections to a bum like him, but he just got caught and banned for life – oh, the disgrace!”

“That, or...Pop finished the season, took over the shop, and married my mom. And, for the record, Grandma Lucia liked him fine.”

“Booooring,” Deacon moans. “As usual. How do I get to the juicy stories?”

“They’re all boring,” I lie, then backpeddle, “...mostly. Life before the bombs was, well, routine. You want me to recite my usual Super Duper Mart shopping list?”

“Vodka, beer, and more vodka, right?”

“And cigarettes. A case of Fancy Lads for vitamins.”

Mac tosses the ball from hand to hand, watching us uncomfortably.

“He was like this the whole way from Lexington to Bunker Hill,” I explain. “Names…dates…demands to spice it up a little.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s a dick.” I hesitate, knowing Mac won’t like it. “Dez guessed right, back at HQ – I traded away ever lying to him for five minutes’ of genuine intel, and he’s rubbing it in.”

“That, exactly!” Deacon shifts on the windowsill, rolling the ankle below his injured thigh like his foot’s gone numb. “Or maybe…just maybe…I’m getting a baseline on the memories in your head, the real deep cuts that, say, an Institute scientist wouldn’t bother scooping out and plopping into the synth they replace you with once you get inside?”

“Oh.”

Mac pushes the helmet higher on his forehead, frowning. “That’s actually not too stupid.”

“So tell me a story with a little pizzazz,” Deacon pushes. “Make this less of a chore.”

“Sorry to bore you, darling,” I waft back, taking refuge in the echo of my mother-in-law Mac refers to as the Super Duper Housewife. “Shall I whip us up a fresh round of Manhattans – except, no, oh dear, we seem to’ve run unforgivably low on vermouth. My, I am a savage hostess today.”

Mac doesn’t laugh, but Deacon grins. “How about a college story? Something with shenanigans, like in a Ronnie Riley flick!”

“Oh, college, well.” I smile back as his request blows the dust off a memory I couldn’t quite bring to mind back in the Switchboard. “Let’s see…there was the day Nate and I were sitting in Psych 101 right up front with the other scholarship kids, diligently taking notes and engaging in no shenanigans whatsoever…”

“Snore.”

“And the professor was telling us about…oh, I forget the researcher’s name, but I remember that my mnemonic memory association had something to do with hot air balloons…”

“Wake me when you get to the rival school’s mascot.”

“…and how she’d easily gotten an entire sophomore class to recall meeting Ralphie the Robot on a childhood trip to Nuka-World, when of course Bottle and Cappie were the Nuka-World mascots – Ralphie was owned by the Patriot Broadcasting Corporation. It was impossible the twain would’ve met.”

Deacon’s lips purse. I continue quickly before he can interrupt.

“And I remember – oh, ho, there’s that slippery word again! Well, I _remember_ the professor playing a classic implanted memory trick on us, the same technique I believe your Dr Amari uses, yes? He merely reminded us of that time we were lost in the market when we were five years old.”

Deacon sits up, and I wonder what market he’s suddenly remembering. Mac only frowns again, confused.

“Except, the funny thing is, I really did get lost in Fallon’s when I was five! My mother’d been dithering between three scarves on a buy-one-get-one-half-off sale – which was silly, since she never wore fancy scarves – and there was a woman, an old woman in a purple dress and a red hat, with the cutest dog on a long leash, a sleek little wiener dog, and I followed her through housewares. I only meant to watch the dog for another minute or two, but then, suddenly, we were out on the sidewalk! I couldn’t read the store signs over the doors, and all the windows seemed to have the exact same mannequins in the exact same outfits, and, and…”

I grope after details, piling them on, almost smelling hot exhaust and tar fumes boiling up from unbroken pavement.

“…and the old woman heard me crying and sent her husband back in to Fallon’s to have them page my mother over the intercom, bought me a lemonade so I wouldn’t faint from heat stroke, and let me pet that little wiener dog – ”

“Why were scarves on sale, if it was summer?” Deacon interrupts sharply.

“Silk scarves,” I reply, with no hesitation. “Clearing out warm-weather stock to make room for winter’s.”

“Winter,” he echoes thoughtfully.

“So, then…” I let the story drop. “Tell me about the time _you_ got lost in the market. I’m sure it’s suddenly fresh in your mind…even if you are a synth.”

The wrinkles around his eyes twitch, but he rallies. “Except no synth could make up a story like that, not off the cuff. They just don’t have the depth of memory to pull details from, let alone combine them convincingly.”

“So you’re not a synth, then,” I smile.

“I’m a special synth. I’ve got all sorts of tricks.”

“Can you do a backflip? That weiner dog could.”

And reply Deacon might have is drowned out by Mac doubling over in laughter, gasping, “W-wiener…dog...”

Deacon glares at us both.

“Nor, sorry Nor, I tried not to laugh since you were getting him over a barrel, but then you…you just kept saying it…”

He laughs again, shaking his head, and it’s good to see. I wait until he starts to wind down, sighing a long _hooooooo_ , and just as Deacon opens his mouth, pipe up, “To be fair, they had a real name, but, well, that’s what we called ‘em. Really, truly, centuries ago some fancy breeder got drunk enough to decide the world needed to be filled with dog-faced dongs and…”

And he’s off, red-faced and coughing and holding his sore ribs. Deacon impatiently drums his heels against the wall until Mac falls silent again and –

“ – and they had these tiny little legs,” I interrupt again, making my fingers skitter and jump along the top of the nearest pew. “Arf, arf!”

Deacon lets his face fall into his hands as Mac wheezes, waving his arms in surrender.

“I don’t believe you,” he gasps.

“It’s the truth,” Deacon disagrees, allowing a faint chuckle. “And, for the record, I _can_ do a backflip.”

He jumps down from the window and kicks his bag open again, pulling out a can of crisps. He eats them quietly, leaning on an upturned pew, and even if it’s my imagination, I don’t feel the weight of his eyes on me for the first time in hours.

“That reminds me,” Mac says, and hands me a pack of Fancy Lads. “Fresh from the ‘mart. Got some vodka for later, too.”

“You’re a lifesaver.”

He stands over me while I eat, arms crossed with his 10mm casually pointed at Deacon, shaking his head when I offer him one. I shrug off the jacket and set his rolled blanket up against a burnt hymnal, and damn if it doesn’t look as welcoming a bed as that air-conditioned oasis in the desert south of Vegas had, but it’s not safe to sleep. Not with the two of them still at each other’s throats, “truce” or not.

Deacon turns as if he heard the thought and nods to Mac.

“So, Lamplight, I was wondering – that super mutant you run the settlements with, he the same one you used to pal around with down south?”

Mac’s jaw tightens at the reminder Deacon’s got _him_ over a barrel. He shakes his head and leans out the front door, scanning the rooftops across the street.

“You know it’s not,” I hiss at Deacon, but he continues blithely.

“So there’s two of them out there, rational mutants who’ll work with humans. Huh. Although, maybe that proves they’re the less rational mutants.” He laughs at his own joke. “Do you remember – well, maybe you didn’t see – but the synth I was with, she fainted dead away, barely caught her in time, when that mutie picked up a little boy and threw him in the air.”

Mac’s hands tighten on his gun.

“And the kid was laughing, screaming, _higher! higher!_ And that big guy was laughing right along with him, so loud it should’ve brought every raider in five miles down on us, except, I guess, what human’s going to run toward something a mutie finds funny, am I right?”

Mac stares resolutely out at the street, even as Deacon bends double up on the windowsill, trying to catch his eye. Finally, I break the deadlock.

“What’d the boy look like?”

“Dark hair, brown eyes…like most kids. Somewhere between infant and ten.” He grins at me, co-conspirators now. “Seemed to have the run of the crew. That old raider – who I personally saw shoot a man for, and I quote, ‘thinkin’ ‘bout lookin’ at my food’ – he gave the kid a whole box of dandy apples. And Reaper, he and Bones sang the alphabet song over and over for a good three miles.” He wiggles his pinky in one ear. “You’ve never lived until you’ve heard a ghoul with a Jersey accent grind through L-M-N-O-P seventy times in a row…well, you’ll want to blow your brains out before he starts the seventy-first, anyway.”

Deacon leaves the bait dangling, lighting another cigarette off the lamp wick.

“Must’ve been a while ago,” Mac finally mutters. “He’s had his ABC’s down for...for a while.”

“I dunno, maybe…” Deacon scratches the back of his neck, looking up at the ceiling like he doesn’t know exactly how long ago it was. “Maybe a year before Winter here woke up? Maybe less. It was the group Bones settled out by Olney, if that helps.”

“Not really.”

Deacon leans forward again, elbows digging into his bony knees. Mac rotates a little to lean against the doorway, holstering his gun, and _damn_ , Deacon is good.

He knows it, too, setting his chin on his hand like Mrs Abel sharing the latest scuttlebutt over the back fence. “How’d you come north, by the Pitt trade route?”

“Nah, my caravan took the coast.”

“The coast, huh – so you crossed the Bay Span?” He shudders at Mac’s nod and turns to me, explaining, “Yeah, don’t know if you ever crossed that before the war, but now, it’s...is ‘four miles of underpants-shitting terror’ accurate?”

Mac snorts. “Guess so.”

“Yes?” I encourage.

“Old suspension bridge,” Mac clarifies. “Hangs over the biggest mirelurk mating pool you'd ever want to see. Which, trust me, you don't.”

“So, logically, they built a market on it,” Deacon continues. “Longest, skinniest trading post in the East.”

“It sways in the wind.” Mac swoops his arms from side to side with a little frown, making sure I know it’s a big damn sway that spooked him.

“I got caught in a brahmin stampede once, had to climb up the west bank rigging. They knocked _sixteen_ stalls into the bay. Mirelurks ate well that day.”

Mac grimaces. “Reasonably Sane Ivan up in the central stack makes a good ‘lurk-fin soup, though.”

“Yeah...not quite ‘plummet to a clampy death’ good, though. I might take a run at Mob City next time. There’s got to be a shortcut north through there.”

“Good luck,” Mac scoffs, stubbing out his cigarette and lighting another, throwing the crumpled pack back to Deacon. “You’ve got to be a doctor or scientist to even get through the first gate.”

“I look good in a lab coat.”

“Yeah, well, I heard there’s a test.”

“I test well!”

“Puh-lease. Even Lone…even Bones wasn’t sure she’d pass, and she learned in vault school, with real books and computers and stuff.”

“And I graduated magna cum from the school of life. Ask me anything.”

Satisfied they can get through a couple hours without murdering each other, I lay back on the jacket and blanket, firmly order my throbbing back to quit its bellyaching, and tip Mac’s hat over my eyes. That blocks out the last of the afternoon sun slanting in the high, broken windows, but leaves my ears wide open to their bickering attempt to list all the bones of a hand (which appears to include _phalange_ , _megacarp_ , _trapezoid_ , _skee-ball_ , and finally _pterodactyl_ ). There’s no way I’ll sleep through that, and I’d tell them to keep it down, or I would if my head wasn’t suddenly too heavy to move, and anyway…

It’s dark, and my shoulder hurts, and there’s a huge splinter digging into my cheek, and that…that’s because…

The wavery lamplight throws crooked men up the wall next to me. My head’s still heavy as a vertibird chock, stretching my neck when I lift it, and the pew next to me heaves again, brass kneeler brackets jingling with the jolt of a long, wiry body. My hands move on their own, snagging the crumpled jacket, pushing me out of the heavy seat’s strike zone just before it crashes down.

Deacon stays on his feet, though – of course he does, he’s not human, he fucking told me so and I didn’t believe him, like he knew I wouldn’t – and pushes Mac’s gun aside just enough to keep his head intact, but the red flash illuminating those pterodactyl bones in his hand and the warm coppery splash on my cheek tells me the bullet found another home. He doesn’t show any pain, only twists Mac’s wrist with that muzzle-burnt hand so the gun drops between them, and when Mac leans after it, drives a knee into his half-healed ribs.

With a gasp and a savage grunt, Mac flings his head up, catching Deacon under the jaw with his helmeted head. Deacon, his face eerily calm, jams the heel of his hand into Mac’s nose, and as the helmet slides from his head, Mac abandons his gun and grabs for it instead, whipping the heavy steel in a wild haymaker to Deacon’s temple.

And, still, he keeps upright until I launch myself over the pew, onto his back, whipping the jacket over his head.

He lets go of Mac’s wrist to tear the leather from his face, barking, “Winter, he’s crazy, you should be helping m– ”

Mac shifts the helmet to his good hand and clobbers him again as I get an elbow around his neck, warm blood squelching through the teeshirt into my armpit. Deacon falls backward, half knocking the wind out of me with an inglorious yelp, and tries to roll away. Abandoning all dignity, I wrap my other arm and both legs around his torso, digging my boot into his injured thigh, and snap to Mac: “Handcuffs!”

Mac crab-walks closer, fumbling in his pocket with the arm not cradling his ribs, and claps one ring around Deacon’s wrist before catching a boot to his bad leg.

_Hold him_ , he mouths, wincing through a shallow gasp, and I do, wriggling us closer to an exposed pipe in the wall near the doorway.

“Winter, listen to me,” Deacon insists before I tighten the arm around his neck. He grunts as my pipboy catches in his wound, stilling just long enough for Mac to drag his hand over his head and snap the other cuff on the pipe. I let go of his neck and slide out from under his bony ass, but he doesn’t take advantage of his newly freed arm to strike my unprotected face.

“He just went crazy, Winter,” he whispers, slapping one hand over the long, ugly gouge in his neck to staunch the blood – but with the other, he’s testing the cuff’s give, pulling his thumb into his palm. “You know he’s not rational when it comes to that kid, he – ”

I reach past him and squeeze the cuff tight around his wrist, cutting into the skin. It normally wouldn’t hold him any more than it would me, but those fingers will go numb fast and that hole in his neck could easily bleed out if he moves too much.

Mac grabs my shoulder and tries to speak, only setting off a coughing jag that doubles him over.

“I just tried to tell him where Bones is now – where his kid’s got to be – ”

“He threatened – ” Mac gasps, face twisting with urgency.

“Yeah, just like that, there he goes again!” Deacon starts to gesture with his free hand, then claps it back on his neck against another spurt of blood. “Insisting I'm running him off – ”

“He…told me to…run, to maybe…to maybe if I…was fast…fast enough, I could beat…” Mac forces out between shallow gasps.

“Calm down,” I murmur, trying to keep an eye on Deacon as I kneel, find his gun by touch next to Boomer, under the overturned pew.

Mac shakes his head. “Could beat…proof he’d send…send her I…turned her in to the Brotherhood…”

“I don’t know where he’s getting any of this,” Deacon insists, his voice rising to a frustrated squeak as he rattles the cuff chain against the pipe. “Everyone says you’re paranoid, man, but if I’d known you were delusional…”

Mac shakes my shoulder again, coughing.

“It’s okay,” I start, but Deacon cuts me off.

“Winter, I swear, I just tried to tell him about that other cryo-vault, where Bones has to be laying low with the kid, but…” He tugs on the cuff again, blood dribbling between his fingers. “Here we are.”

“That’s not…” Mac pauses for a deeper breath, shaking his head hard. “That’s not how…it happened…at all. You’ve got to believe – ”

“I was trying to be a friend – you said we’re friends,” Deacon whines.

“Are we?” I ask, trying to draw him out. He’s been careful not to strike me, even when I tackled him…and he’s still talking…there’s got to be a card left up his sleeve.

“Nor, you can’t – ”

I flick my fingers in the sign for _hold_ , but he’s not looking, his face tight with pain as he forces in a deeper breath. It hurts me almost as much to interrupt him again. “I want to hear what Deacon has to say.”

His face falls.

“I could’ve held that information back,” Deacon rushes into the abrupt silence. “Should have, obviously. But I’m the only person outside that vault who can guess where they are, and if something happens to me, how’ll Lamplight ever find his son, with Bones too scared to poke her nose out the hatch?”

“No good deed goes unpunished, eh?” I hazard, inching closer, ignoring the thump just behind me that’s probably Mac’s boot slamming into the overturned pew. It’s too soon to play it so close to convinced, I’ve overegged the pudding by an entire chicken, but maybe he’s arrogant enough – he’s almost certainly arrogant enough, even now – to try to out-manoeuvre me.

“Good deeds aren't my business,” he starts, licking his lips, and as he leans forward a pocket in his jacket gapes open, and am I having a buffout-induced stroke or is the threadbare fabric inside...glowing? “But – ”

My fingers dip past the unbuttoned flap with none of the delicacy Mac’s taught me, hooking around the metal rectangles inside. Deacon lashes out instinctively, bloodied hand knocking my nose sideways, thumb digging into my eye, before jerking back with a muffled _shit_ as I pull my prize out of his reach: holotags, the words flashing at me as they spin on the end of their chain: _Initiate MacCready, R. J._

Mac snatches the gun from my other hand, jams the barrel into the helmet-brim-sized lump growing on the other man’s forehead, and Deacon goes very, very still.

“I didn’t mean to do that,” he whispers.

“Oh, you didn’t mean to accidentally lift these off Mac’s neck, or whoopsy-daisy, use them to play with his son’s life?” I scoff, any threat somewhat ruined by the steady dribble of blood from my nose. Mac’s head whips back to me, eyebrows jamming together as he takes in the holotags in my hand before dismissing them to turn back to Deacon.

“No,” the synth disagrees carefully, “to hurt you.”

“You don’t touch her,” Mac snarls.

“That was never part of the plan,” Deacon replies, his voice pitched low like he’s trying to work his way around a pack of Back Bay mongrels.

Mac’s finger tightens on the trigger, but he waits and, after a few moments pass, tilts his head toward me. “Aren’t you going to tell me not to?”

I rub my face on my shoulder, leaving a smeared portrait of my lips and chin on Deacon’s shirt, and drop the holotags back over his head, tucking them into his suit. “No.”

A slow smile blooms across Mac’s face.

“I have a map!” Deacon blurts out. “North end of the Glowing Sea, maybe ten square miles.”

Mac hesitates, easing his finger off the trigger and glancing at me.

“There’s a handful of stable underground pockets that’re nearly rad-free, where an Institute fugitive might hide – or someone chasing him could safely rest up, even find potable water,” Deacon hurries on.

I close my eyes and count to ten. “How amazingly convenient that you just so happened to scout out exactly where I need to go.”

“Sure,” he returns with a little of his old tartness. “A route south so dangerous only the most desperate would take it – no idea why I’d investigate something like that, right?”

“Where’s this map?” Mac demands, pushing the barrel harder into his forehead.

Deacon rolls his eyes to look at it. “Right up here, ol’ buddy.”

Mac’s lips tighten to a bloodless line. He lets his arm fall, head drooping as he holsters his gun, and steps away...then turns back to kick Deacon’s injured leg, wringing a surprised, pained grunt from him. He raises both hands before either of us can respond and thumps down on the far pew.

Deacon turns to me expectantly. “So, what do you say we –”

“No.”

“What?”

I lean over the pew at Mac’s shoulder. “And what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The handcuffs rattle behind us.

“I’m leaving him –” Mac starts, then blinks. “Wait. You don’t care if I kill him?”

“Right now, I’d flip you for the privilege.”

“Didn’t you hear me? I can cut days off your search – hell, if we’re lucky, I’ll lead you right to him!”

Mac hooks a thumb toward him, raising a reluctant eyebrow. “He’s got a point.”

“And just how lucky do you feel right now?” I hunker down next to Deacon as far as his jeans will let me, swiping blood from my chin. “You think I’ll reward you for holding out on me? For making me waste months buying up every fusion core in the goddamn ‘Wealth?”

“No, but…” he starts, tapping his trapped fingers against the wall as he runs the numbers on the value of his intel versus just how badly I want to permanently shut that mouth and ends on a sum he doesn’t like. I let him twist for a few heartbeats, but his mouth opens and closes without finishing the thought.

“If you’d stepped forward months ago, told me what you knew and what you wanted from me, we could’ve made a deal. And maybe I’m not...completely...honest with Preston or Danse, but you’d’ve have known by then that I damn well keep my promises. You didn’t have to trot me through your little humiliation gauntlet to prove I’m worth taking advantage of.”

Deacon lifts his cuffed hand in an abbreviated flap. “I didn’t want to make a deal. I wanted –”

“Right, you want to be friends.” Mac’s hand settles on my shoulder, squeezing tight when my voice breaks. “The sick thing is, I think you mean that...as much as you mean anything.”

“You don’t have a clue what you’re walking into.”

“Good thing I’m bringing a detective, then.” My scratched eye itches, and I try not to think of the accumulated filth under my own nails, let alone a real wastelander’s. “You know, I saw that old power plant from I-90 every few weeks, driving home to Springfield – the one everyone said would blow if someone sneezed too hard on the reactor, let alone dropped the big one on Boston. Quite a few factories, too...big, solid, concrete storage blocks that might still be good to hunker down in. And Nick, back in his meatier days, got to know those warehouses pretty well, nosing around the packing union’s floating black market. But that’s just more of my boring stories, huh?”

“You could’ve told me you’re not going in there blind,” Mac whines quietly, and...damn.

He’s got a point. He never asked for the whole plan, but then I never told him there was one. Why would he need to know, if he wasn’t part of it, if he’d only argue against it…if he’s just the help, not my partner?

“Sorry,” I mutter back, knowing the low growl expresses none of that. I owe him a much better apology, and to hear out and soothe every objection he’s got, but Deacon’s sharp ears make that impossible. At least that’s got a quick fix, and one that’ll make Mac happy to boot. “You mind taking care of him, honey?”

To my surprise, Mac hesitates, sharing a long look with Deacon that, for once, neither of them break to glance at me.

“No. No, okay? We’re not doing this. Take the deal.” He pushes his gun into my hands.

“What? Take…what?” Deacon only shrugs in response to my glare, one corner of his mouth twitching.

“Take the deal,” he says again, crossing his arms when I try to hand the gun back to him.

“It's entirely within the realm of possibility he's the literal devil, you realise? There's got to be some holy water left around here we can dunk him in, see if he bursts into flame.”

He doesn’t laugh, only stalks to the far end of the church. “I owe you.”

“We talked about that word,” I growl, stumbling on a loose floorboard as I try to follow without taking my eyes off Deacon.

“Doesn’t make it any less true.” He shakes his head before I can argue. “It’s Shaun’s turn, alright? All I’ve done is put you farther behind – recovering after the Pike, and dragging Danse into Med-Tek even though that could of blown up just as bad. This time, I'll take the risk.”

“You’re right, though. He’s a threat.”

“But you’ve scared him shi–” He cuts himself off with a frustrated sigh and finishes curtly. “Get the damn map in your pipboy. Get in and out of the Glow fast as you can, and the Institute too. Get Shaun. And then we’ll...we’ll figure everything else out.”

I reach over, try to catch one of those clenched hands, but he doesn’t look at me, only puts on a weak smile and mumbles, “And you gotta get used to playing fair. Kids can sense it when the other guy has one more mushroom in his bowl, let alone if…if you’re picking which...”

His smile falters as he trails off.

“I _could_ do this on my own, though...well, with Nick.” I nudge his shoulder with mine. “It hardly compares to an extra mushroom.”

“There’s nothing you won’t argue with, is there?” he grumbles, pulling away.

Since he clearly wants a little space, I...hook my arm around his neck, taking advantage of the inch or so I’ve got on him to pull him into an affectionate headlock. He accedes with a rumbling sigh, squirming sideways to ease the pressure on his bad shoulder. His carotid artery flutters like hummingbird wings against the soft part of my elbow, slowing a little as his temple settles against my cheek.

“If I take this map…” I push his hat back on my head, then plop it onto his where it belongs. “I’ll find that scientist, make him tell me how to get into egghead paradise, and then...then, well…”

Mac nudges me out of thought. “Yeah, yeah – then?”

“Then I beg, borrow, or steal that vertibird.”

He pulls away from my grip. “Don’t start that again. I can’t turn you down twice. I’m not good enough.”

“You’re more than good enough,” I whisper back, trying to ignore the pressure of Deacon’s scrutiny on the back of my head. “We’re doing this.”

He swallows hard, watching his feet, and finally nods. “Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We go south. We get Duncan, and then back home, and you go after Shaun.”

His head drops. I catch his hand again, and after a deep, hitching breath he brings our interlaced fingers to his lips. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Don’t be an ass,” I retort, more sharply than I intend, but he only chuckles, still shaking his head like it’s on fire.

“Hey,” he says, and his eyes are bright when they finally meet mine. “You want to get married when we’re back in Diamond City?”

I freeze. Somewhere very far away, Deacon guffaws, then fakes a coughing fit that makes his laughter more obvious.

Mac winces. “Shit, you know...forget it...I mean, don’t forget it, but...I...you...I’ve got the worst timing.”

And there’s no damn time – it’s like someone’s punched the fast-forward button on the holotape player and he’s looking at me and – and the worst thing I could possibly tell him is that I’ve got a husband, and it isn’t him, but – I don’t, but – and over his shoulder Deacon’s fucking laughing at me and if I could set fires with my mind he’d be ashes – and with all the dexterity a law degree and months of misleading two well-meaning armies can drill into a natural-born dissembler, muster up half a smile and manage:

“Later. Okay?”

It's far from my finest diplomatic foray, but seems to work.

“Yeah, later,” Mac agrees, but he’s smiling now. Glowing, almost, under layers of bruises I’ve put on him in the last few days like none of that hurts anymore.

...maybe it worked too well.

“Seriously, shoot me now,” Deacon groans. “Blood loss isn’t ending this agony fast enough.”

“I should probably keep him from bleeding out.” I add hopefully, “If you're absolutely sure we have to let him walk out of here?”

“I'm sure, but, take your time,” he replies, one corner of his mouth quirking up before he pecks a quick kiss on my lips. “I’m gonna make sure nothing’s sneaking up on us.”

“Yeah, it’d be terrible to get caught off guard,” Deacon murmurs as I uncuff him, carefully pocketing the keys.

“Shut up.”

“So, let me be the first to congratulate you!” He raises an eyebrow. “Or maybe not? From over here, your answer wasn’t so clear. But I'm sure you two are on the same page.”

“Shut. Up.” I punctuate the command with two sharp flicks to his lenses, but he doesn’t flinch.

“No, you're right, I'm the bad guy here. I deserve this.” He wiggles his white-knuckled fingers, grimacing as I pull his other hand away to scope out the damage underneath. It’s better than it could be - from the upward slant, Mac was aiming to fire into the softness under his jaw, killing him instantly - but has to hurt like hell.

“You deserve worse.”

“It was all for you.”

“Really.” I take my time on his neck, bare fingers lingering after a splash of sterilising alcohol, pinching the skin together as the stim works like I care if he’s left with a big ugly scar. “That’s the creepiest thing a man’s ever said to me, and I was a barfly in goddamn D.C.”

He flinches from my touch, but persists. “You don’t get it now, but you will.”

“Yeah, that’s what the junior senator from Florida said, too, about the basket of grapefruit he sent to my office.”

He pulls away, taking a second stim from my medkit and jabbing it in his thigh. “I shouldn’t have bothered, anyway. You two’ll implode all on your own.”

“He’s the only reason you’re alive right now.” It’s viciously satisfying, his cringe when I run my thumb along the healing gash. “You get that, right? And there’s nothing in that deal about intact knees.”

“You’re not even in the same story – he’s turning the last page of a romance novel, and you’re one act into a slasher flick. It’s doomed.” He calls out to Mac before I can retort. “Hey, Lamplight?”

I pull my hand away from his neck just before Mac’s head pops in the doorway. “Yeah?”

“I got a radio,” Deacon says, the weight of his eyes on me. “Not one of those little ham radios – military grade, with real range.”

Mac kneels next to me, looking over his shoulder at the street. “What kind of range?”

“I can reach Haven. Their radio can reach Chocworld.” He swallows, the healing muscles in his throat shivering, before he continues. “And then to the ‘Grace, and from them on to a sympathetic DJ, who can sneak a message out in his broadcast, despite his tin-can keepers.”

Mac takes a deep breath. “Three Dog.”

“Three what?” These Railroad code names just get sillier.

“I heard back from Bones in two days,” Deacon tells him. “When I asked about you.”

“But she wouldn't break cover like that, just for me,” Mac starts, then rubs his forehead and says quietly, almost to himself, “Maybe she would. I don't know.”

“Mac?”

“I don’t know,” he repeats a little louder. “He could be full of crap.”

“He’s so full of it I’m surprised his eyes aren’t brown.”

“He’s right here.” Deacon manages to sound offended. “And in this case, he’s telling the truth for no benefit to himself whatsoever, and would also appreciate if no one mentions this radio to Dez, since he’s assured her many, many times that the only external communication line he has is the ol’ shoe leather express.”

“You can still shoot him,” I murmur to Mac. “Honestly, I’d take it as a kindness if you did.”

“So…” Mac starts, ignoring me, “That game with my dogtags – that was bull? You could’ve just radioed her?”

“Yeah, it was a game,” Deacon drawls, tilting his head like his eyes are rolling behind those glasses. “It’s a fun little joke, forcing him to do what you both know he should – get back to the sick little boy who needs him.”

Mac hunches his shoulders. “We got that in hand already.”

“Or...just work with me here...you don’t need to involve the Brotherhood at all.” He resurrects his old smirk, but like that pretty freshman in _The Night Doctors_ , it doesn’t come back quite right. “Maybe, like I’d planned, we take a fun road trip south, playing little lost synths while you learn the route...my contacts...all the secrets even Dez doesn’t know.”

“No,” Mac growls.

“We swing wide around Evergreen Mills and walk right into that old garage –”

“No!”

“You never shut up,” I marvel, reaching into the side pocket with my repair supplies. “You just never know when to shut up.”

“Now,” Deacon replies as I approach with menace and half a roll of duct tape. “Right now, this is me shutting up.”

“And yet you’re still talking.”

“Because Lamplight hasn’t given me a message yet,” he insists, eyebrows rising innocently. “Something short. We embed a code in regular radio chatter to throw off any potential listeners, so, the simpler the better.”

Mac clears his throat. “‘Duncan’. That short enough?”

“She knows the kid’s name already. Maybe you want to elaborate, just a scooch?”

“Fine,” Mac scowls. “How ‘bout the coordinates to Sanctuary, too? Forget...forget any of us going south. Like some jagoff keeps saying, you've got to trust your friends. She can come here.”

“What, to stay?” I ask, almost certainly too sharply.

“No,” he snaps back.

Yeah, definitely too sharply.

“Just to bring Duncan,” he continues. “Or, more likely, send him up with one of the Canterbury traders she trusts. It’s not like even the Brotherhood’s managed to blast her out of D.C. yet.”

But he doesn’t meet my eyes when he says it, and the picture’s got to be clear to all three of us: the Commonwealth’s Brotherhood, if not exactly under my thumb, at least brought to heel. The fortified settlements, more territory won from raiders and Gunners every day. All our farmland, and the fresh food that only lightly toasts one’s DNA proteins.

Mac, the big man rescuing his friends for once, instead of needing a hand up out of the shit.

“Point her to 111, instead,” I tell them, and shrug in response to Mac’s confused frown. “It’s safer. Danse checks in at Sanctuary, but no one’ll go near the vault. Not with all those trigger-happy isolationists just behind the door. And she likes vaults, right?”

“Yeah. She does.” Mac’s soft look fades as he barks over his shoulder to Deacon, “And get some kind of proof that it’s really her. Nothing you could possibly know.”

“You want anything else that easy while I’m at it?” Deacon grumbles, poking at his healing neck with blood-drenched fingers. “Like a big hunk of green moon cheese?”

“You’re resourceful,” Mac taunts, but the line between his eyebrows smooths when he looks back at me and squeezes my hand again, then picks up Boomer as a sharp whistle outside draws our attention to the door.

“High Rise,” Deacon mutters and whistles back.

A bald man with deep-set eyes leans inside, his hand flying to his holster when he sees Deacon. “What the hell happened here?”

“Zeller’s stragglers,” I tell him, casually making sure the handcuffs are deep in my back pocket. “Hell of a fight, and Deacon got the worst of it. So you’re High Rise?”

The man relaxes at Deacon's silent nod. “Then you’re Lamplight, right? Dez’s new heavy?”

“Already taking my name,” Mac snorts with a faint grin, and something deep in my stomach freezes over.

“Close enough,” I return, with a wan chuckle of my own that dies as High Rise’s charge follows him across the threshold and raises his gaze from his own shoes just long enough to catch the oil lamp’s flickering light.

The hair’s wrong, too dark and too long, but those piercing eyes, Roman nose, and lipless slash of a mouth that scowled at his scapegrace granddaughter-in-law across so many Annapolis Sunday dinners...that’s _the_ General, the real General Freis. Except younger than me, hunched and cringing and red-eyed with exhausted fear instead of raw, vein-popping Commie-hatred.

_What the hell is going on here?_


End file.
